Mrs .  William  Penman 


\/^ 


X. 


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mi  yiu 


{Jy\i^t^OUyt 


APPRECIATIONS  OF  POETRY 


APPRECIATIONS 
OF  POETRY 


BY 

LAFCADIO  HEARN 


SELECTED  AND  EDITED  WITH 
AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 

JOHN  ERSKINE,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  English  in  Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1916 


Copyright.   1916 

Bt  MITCHELL  Mcdonald 


C<({dCtA^^-^n^  i^-f^ 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     On  Love  in  English  Poetry i 

II     Studies  in  Tennyson  (A  Fragment) 30 

III  Studies  in  Rossetti 37 

IV  Studies  in  Swinburne 126 

V     Studies  in  Browning 172 

VI     William  Morris 239 

VII     Charles  Kingsley  as  Poet 280 

VIII     Matthew  Arnold  as  Poet 298 

IX     A  Note  on  Jean  Ingelow 334 

X     "Three  Silences" 349 

XI     A  Note  on  Watson's  Poems 352 

XII     A  Note  on  Robert  Buchanan 359 

XIII  A  Note  on  Munby's  "Dorothy"    ......  376 

XIV  Robert  Bridges 385 

Index 403 


M126599 


INTRODUCTION 


This  volume  contains  a  second  selection  from  the  lectures 
which  Lafcadio  Hearn  delivered  at  the  University  of 
Tokyo  between  1896  and  1902.  An  account  of  these  lec- 
tures and  of  the  remarkable  student  notes  in  which  they 
were  preserved,  is  given  in  the  Introduction  to  the  first  selec- 
tion, "Interpretations  of  Literature,"  1915.  The  reader  of 
the  present  volume  should  be  reminded  at  least  that  Laf- 
cadio Hearn  lectured  without  notes,  but  very  slowly,  choos- 
ing simple  words  and  constructions,  in  order  to  make  the 
foreign  language  as  easy  as  possible  to  his  Japanese  stu- 
dents ;  and  some  of  his  students  managed  to  take  down  many 
of  his  lectures  word  for  word.  From  their  notes  the  present 
volume,  like  the  "Interpretations  of  Literature,"  is  selected. 
The  fact  that  the  lectures  come  to  us  indirectly,  in  places 
perhaps  inaccurately,  without  Hearn's  revision  and  there- 
fore without  the  exquisite  surface  of  his  style,  may  give  us 
at  first  a  sense  of  loss;  but  second  thoughts  suggest  rather 
our  good  fortune  in  having  the  lectures  as  they  are.  The 
best  of  Hearn's  style,  the  man  himself,  is  perhaps  more 
clearly  revealed  here  than  in  any  of  his  finished  work.  His 
letters  indicate  that  had  he  come  back  to  lecture  in  the 
United  States,  as  in  1902  he  thought  of  doing,  he  would 
have  used  the  substance  of  some  of  these  classroom  talks;  and 
he  apparently  thought  of  writing  them  out  and  publishing 
them.  He  had  made  no  beginning  on  them,  however,  when 
he  died.  Even  if  he  had  lived  to  publish  a  volume  or  two, 
it  is  not  likely  that  he  could  have  come  before  the  public 
as  a  critic  with  the  same  lack  of  self-consciousness  with 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

which  he  addressed  his  classes,  for  he  modestly  undervalued 
his  wide  and  profound  knowledge  of  the  essentials  of  litera- 
ture, and  he  was  aware  of  the  fault-finding  abilities  of  pro- 
fessional scholarship.  It  is  doubtful  also  whether  we 
should  have  suspected  from  carefully  written  lectures  his 
extraordinary  genius  as  an  interpreter  of  the  West  to  the 
East,  since  he  would  have  been  writing  for  us  rather  than 
for  the  Japanese.  The  complete  range  of  his  powers  could 
have  been  recorded  only  in  a  faithful  report  of  what  he  said 
in  his  classroom;  and  this  his  students  have  provided  for  us 
in  their  notes. 

It  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  say  that  with  few  exceptions 
these  chapters  were  not  composed  in  the  order  in  which  they 
are  here  grouped.  In  fact,  it  is  impossible  to  tell,  save  in 
one  case,  just  when  the  lectures  were  delivered.  From  a 
date  at  the  end  of  the  Browning  notes,  it  appears  that  the 
course  on  Tennyson,  Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  Browning 
was  brought  to  a  close  in  May,  1899.  Since  the  notes  of  the 
Tennyson  lecture  were  hopelessly  inadequate,  a  fragment  on 
that  poet  from  a  single,  more  elementary  lecture  on  Vic- 
torian literature  is  substituted.  The  editor  believes  that 
this  lecture  gives  in  substance  Hearn's  interpretation  of 
Tennyson,  though  without  the  brilliant  illustrations  of  the 
elaborate  study. 

It  seemed  wise  to  omit  from  most  of  these  chapters  a 
number  of  paraphrases,  which  Hearn  employed  to  clarify 
the  English  poems  for  his  Japanese  students,  but  which  are 
superfluous  for  the  English  reader.  It  also  seemed  best  to 
omit  a  sentence  here  and  there,  where  the  notes  were  hope- 
lessly tangled;  if  the  reader  detects  an  occasional  abrupt- 
ness, he  may  attribute  it  to  such  an  omission,  and  be  thank- 
ful that  he  was  not  invited  to  decipher  the  original.  Such 
places,  however,  are  not  many,  and  the  lectures  are  suffi- 
ciently coherent  to  encourage  the  hope  that  nothing  impor- 
tant has  been  thrown  overboard.  No  attempt  has  been 
made   to   reconcile   an   occasional  contradiction,    as   when 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

Hearn  seems  to  say,  at  different  times,  that  Tennyson  is  the 
greatest  artist  of  the  Victorian  era,  and  so  is  Rossetti,  and  so 
is  Swinburne.  The  editor  believes  that  such  variations  of 
mood,  so  natural  to  all  lecturers,  and  especially  to  lovers 
of  poetry,  should  stand  untouched.  He  has  imposed  his 
personal  tastes  upon  Lafcadio  Hearn  only  in  the  choice  of 
passages  for  publication.  The  further  task  he  set  himself 
has  been  merely  mechanical — the  correction  of  spelling  and 
of  punctuation,  and  the  verification  of  facts,  dates,  and  quo- 
tations. In  preparing  this  volume,  as  in  preparing  the 
"Interpretations  of  Literature,"  he  has  enjoyed  the  advice 
and  the  assistance  of  Pay  Director  Mitchell  McDonald, 
U.  S.  N.,  Lafcadio  Heam's  friend  and  literary  executor. 


II 

In  the  Introduction  to  "Interpretations  of  Literature" 
the  editor  stressed  the  significance  of  those  lectures  as  inter- 
pretations of  the  Western  mind  to  the  Eastern.  Heam's 
published  works  taught  us  to  understand  something  of 
Japan;  in  his  classroom  he  performed  a  service  as  remark- 
able, in  helping  the  young  men  who  now  mould  some  part 
of  Japanese  opinion,  to  think  intelligently  and  kindly  of  our 
civilisation.  The  unique  position  in  world  culture  which 
he  thereby  won  for  himself,  appeals  easily  to  the  imagina- 
tion, and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  first  two  volumes  of 
his  lectures  were  accepted  promptly  and  cordially  as  the 
documents  of  this  portion  of  his  fame.  In  the  same  Intro- 
duction, however,  the  editor  tried  to  stress  also  what  seems 
to  him  Lafcadio  Heam's  very  great  genius  as  an  interpre- 
tative critic.  He  is  glad  of  this  opportunity  to  make  the 
attempt  again,  for  a  number  of  reviewers  stumbled  some- 
what over  his  praise,  denouncing  it  as  extravagant  and  as 
likely  to  react  to  Hearn's  disadvantage.  The  editor  persists 
in  thinking  that  what  he  said  was  not  extravagant;  if  it  is, 


X  INTRODUCTION 

however,  he  wishes  to  turn  it  plainly  to  his  own  discredit 
rather  than  to  Hearn's. 

The  passage  that  bothered  the  reviewers  was  this:  "In 
substance  if  not  in  form  they  [the  lectures]  are  criticism 
of  the  finest  kind,  unmatched  in  English  unless  we  return  to 
the  best  of  Coleridge,  and  in  some  ways  unequalled  by  any- 
thing in  Coleridge."  The  sentences  immediately  following 
were  intended  to  make  clear  what  the  editor  meant  by 
"criticism  of  the  finest  kind" :  "Most  literary  criticism  dis- 
cusses other  things  than  the  one  matter  in  which  the  writer 
and  the  reader  are  interested — that  is,  the  effect  of  the  writ- 
ing upon  the  reader.  It  is  hardly  too  severe  to  say  that 
most  critics  talk  around  a  poem  or  a  story  or  a  play,  without 
risking  a  judgment  on  the  centre  of  their  subject;  or  else,  like 
even  Coleridge  at  times,  they  tell  you  what  you  ought  to 
read  into  a  given  work,  instead  of  showing  you  what  is  wait- 
ing there  to  be  seen.  Lafcadio  Hearn  is  remarkable  among 
critics  for  throwing  a  clear  light  on  genuine  literary  experi- 
ence— on  the  emotions  which  the  books  under  discussion 
actually  give  us." 

Some  of  the  objections  to  this  praise  of  Hearn  doubtless 
were  simply  the  expression  of  surprise  that  the  great  name 
of  Coleridge  should  be  brought  into  comparison  with  any 
contemporary  name.  Against  those  who  think  that  to  be 
great  a  writer  must  have  been  dead  a  long  time,  the  editor 
is  not  eager  to  defend  himself.  He  did  not  mean  to  suggest 
that  in  creative  genius  Lafcadio  Hearn  is  the  equal  of  Sam- 
uel Taylor  Coleridge  at  his  best.  He  did  have  in  mind, 
however,  the  fact  that  in  his  critical  writings  Coleridge  for 
the  most  part  discusses  philosophical  principles  rather  than 
particular  books;  that  his  criticism  is  studied  chiefly  for 
those  abstract  discussions  of  poetry;  and  that  he  left  us  all 
too  few  examples  of  the  ability  he  undoubtedly  had,  the 
ability  which  Lafcadio  Hearn's  lectures  exhibit  on  so  vast 
a  scale — the  ability  to  explain  to  us  our  own  feelings  about 
books,  why  we  like  this  or  are  perplexed  by  that,  and  what 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

else  there  is  in  the  book  to  fascinate  or  perplex  us.  This 
kind  of  interpretation,  though  it  looks  simple,  is  extraordi- 
narily rare;  it  is  possible  only  to  the  critic  who  understands 
human  nature,  and  who  approaches  books  from  the  poetic 
or  creative  point  of  view.  Coleridge  had  the  knowledge 
of  human  nature,  and  in  dealing  with  the  poetry  of  his  own 
school  or  age  he  had  creative  sympathy  of  the  finest  kind. 
But  he  left  us  no  evidence  that  his  sympathy  extended  much 
outside  of  the  romantic  period;  what  would  he  have  said 
of  Zola  or  of  de  Maupassant  or  of  Kipling  or  of  Masefield*? 
Later  English  critics,  following  Coleridge  in  their  smaller 
way,  have  discussed  general  principles  of  art,  and  in  most 
cases  have  shown  creative  sympathy  with  their  own  par- 
ticular kind  of  art — the  limits  of  their  sympathy,  it  would 
seem,  becoming  narrower  and  narrower,  until  in  Arnold 
and  in  Pater  we  find  a  certain  estrangement  even  from  the 
best  writers  of  their  own  day.  The  remarkable  fact 
about  Lafcadio  Hearn  is  that  though  his  professed  creed 
was  a  somewhat  narrow  romanticism,  he  exhibits  again  and 
again  the  most  acute  understanding  of  writers  whose  tem- 
perament, training,  and  environment  differed  widely  from 
his. 

The  point  may  be  made  more  plainly.  From  Aristotle 
down,  the  academic  tradition  of  criticism  has  dealt  with 
principles  which,  if  valid,  would  afford  a  basis  for  judging 
literature,  for  classifying  it,  for  deciding  what  is  bad  and 
what  is  good.  Fascinating,  amusing,  or  distressing  as  the 
tradition  may  be  as  a  record  of  large  ambition  and  of  human 
mistakes,  it  has  often  been  a  source  of  grief  to  creative  writ- 
ers, since  it  can  be  carried  on — it  sometimes  has  been  carried 
on — with  authority  by  men  who  knew  little  about  writing 
and  cared  less,  and  it  has  therefore  tended  frequently  to 
degenerate  into  formulas  of  technique.  A  more  radical  ob- 
jection, however,  is  that  the  principles  in  this  tradition  are 
drawn  from  observations  of  established  literature — a  great 
many  plays,  for  example,  being  taken  as  the  phenomena 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

from  which  the  definitions  of  drama  are  deduced.  In  this 
process  criticism  has  never  found  a  method  to  distinguish 
safely  between  what  is  local  and  what  is  universal  in  the 
phenomena  before  it,  and  the  definitions  so  made  have  had 
to  be  revised  continually  in  a  hopeless  attempt  to  keep  up 
with  a  living  and  growing  art.  It  would  be  more  profitable 
to  examine  the  original  terms  on  which  art  lives,  studying, 
for  example,  the  effect  of  the  play  upon  the  audience,  rather 
than  the  theory  of  the  action  on  the  stage.  If  our  logic  is 
resolute,  we  must  come  to  that  at  last ;  for  when  we  examine 
all  the  great  plays  of  our  time,  as  Aristotle  did,  to  determine 
what  a  great  play  is,  an  earlier  verdict  has  already  decided 
for  us  which  are  the  great  plays;  the  most  that  our  criticism 
can  hope  to  accomplish  is  a  belated  and  elaborate  restate- 
ment of  our  own  premises.  Meanwhile  there  are  curious 
pitfalls  for  even  the  best  of  theoretical  critics.  Arnold,  for 
example,  looking  over  the  poems  generally  recognised  as 
great,  concluded  that  they  were  so  recognised  because  they 
had  the  grand  style;  the  grand  style  makes  a  poem  great. 
If  there  were  any  connection  between  poetic  greatness  and 
the  grand  style,  Arnold  might  have  enjoyed  peace  of  mind 
thenceforth,  knowing  that  the  grand  style  would  bring 
about  an  automatic  recognition  of  poetic  greatness.  But  he 
proceeded  to  preach  the  recognition  of  the  grand  style  as  a 
cultured  obligation  rather  than  as  a  scientific  fact,  and  we 
cannot  take  his  word  for  it  that  his  own  verse  in  the  grand 
style  is  greater  poetry  than  some  other  verse  we  like  better. 
Over  against  the  traditional  criticism  there  has  always 
been  the  practical  science,  the  shop-talk,  of  the  artists  them- 
selves. The  best  critic  of  a  wagon  is  probably  the  wagon- 
builder,  as  the  immortal  shoe-maker  was  the  best  critic  of 
the  shoe  in  the  Greek  picture.  When  he  ventured  to  criti- 
cise the  painting  further,  the  shoe-maker  was  told  to  stick 
to  his  last.  The  creative  artist  might  repeat  the  invitation 
to  the  merely  academic  critic  who  cannot  himself  create. 
The  creator  is  not  greatly  concerned  with  pigeon-holing 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

his  art;  he  is  interested  in  the  work  before  him  for  what  it 
is  intended  to  accomplish,  and  he  draws  on  his  practical 
experience  for  an  opinion  as  to  whether  it  will  accomplish 
its  purpose.  Therefore  he  is  not  afraid  to  give  an  opinion 
about  an  entirely  new  work  of  art;  he  recognises  immedi- 
ately its  essential  usefulness,  as  Emerson  foresaw  at  once  the 
great  career  of  Walt  Whitman's  poetry.  Traditional  criti- 
cism, on  the  contrary,  is  often  unwilling  to  readjust  itself 
to  new  genius.  If  it  is  thought  that  the  shop-talk  of  artists 
would  naturally  be  impressionistic  or  haphazard,  it  should 
be  remembered  that  they  alone  among  critics  work  out  the 
illustrations  of  their  principles,  as  the  wagon  maker  illus- 
trates his  idea  of  a  wagon.  The  basis  of  a  real  science  is 
here;  these  critics  try  to  understand  in  order  to  practise  the 
art. 

In  literature,  as  distinguished  from  other  arts,  the  wisest 
talk  of  the  creator  has  to  do  with  life,  with  human  na- 
ture; for  these  are  the  materials  he  works  in,  and  for  his 
knowledge  of  these  his  readers  are  best  equipped  to  judge 
him.  In  the  letters  and  the  memoirs  of  expert  writers, 
what  incomparable  criticism  we  often  find  I  Witness  the 
various  penetrating  remarks  of  Tennyson  recorded  in  his 
memoirs,  the  superb  insights  of  Charles  Lamb  in  his  letters, 
especially  to  Wordsworth,  and  the  equally  remarkable  ob- 
servations in  the  journals  of  Emerson  and  of  Hawthorne. 
This  wisdom  shows  no  sign  of  deserting  the  contemporary 
writer.  A  Broadway  playwright  remarks  that  nowadays 
you  cannot  let  your  hero  and  heroine,  in  anything  but 
a  farce,  fall  in  love  at  first  sight,  because  most  of  your 
audience  have  fallen  in  love  by  the  more  deliberate  modern 
process.  Professor  Santayana  expresses  the  same  truth 
when  he  says  that  wherever  the  sexes  have  been  jealously 
guarded  from  each  other,  with  few  opportunities  for  meet- 
ing, they  have  fallen  in  love  at  first  sight,  since  fall  in  love 
they  must.  Similar  knowledge  of  life,  together  with  the 
creative   observation  of   that   which   lies   under   our   eyes, 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

but  which  the  average  reader  and  the  theoretical  critic  often 
do  not  see,  might  be  illustrated  in  several  passages  from 
Professor  Santayana's  too  inaccessible  study  of  "Hamlet." 
He  says  in  effect,  for  example,  that  no  one  ever  feels  that 
Hamlet  is  mad,  but  everybody  feels  that  he  is  irrational. 
Though  we  cannot  all  of  us  explain  why  we  feel  he  is  irra- 
tional, our  impression  is  correct.  The  impression  is  pro- 
duced by  such  episodes  as  the  performance  of  the  play 
before  the  king.  Hamlet  had  no  doubt  that  his  uncle  mur- 
dered his  father;  his  question  was  whether  he  should  avenge 
the  murder  by  assassination.  To  clear  his  doubts,  he  set 
a  trap  which  merely  confirmed  the  king's  guilt,  but  gave  no 
advice  as  to  taking  revenge.  To  those  of  us  who  have 
felt  Hamlet's  irrationality,  without  perceiving  the  slip  in 
his  logic,  this  kind  of  criticism  brings  intelligence  in  under- 
standing our  old  impressions,  and  increases  our  susceptibil- 
ity to  new  ones. 

This  is  what  the  editor  meant  by  "criticism  of  the  finest 
kind" — the  discussion  of  art  by  those  who  know  how  to 
create  it,  the  interpretation  of  books  which  opens  our  eyes 
to  life,  which  sets  no  gulf  between  the  problem  of  how  to 
read  and  the  problem  of  how  to  write.  For  this  kind  of 
criticism,  the  editor  believes,  Lafcadio  Heam's  lectures  have 
a  unique  place  in  English  literature,  unmatched  in  quality 
by  any  but  the  best  of  Coleridge,  and  in  quantity  quite  with- 
out parallel. 


APPRECIATIONS  OF  POETRY 


CHAPTER  I 
ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

I  OFTEN  imagine  that  the  longer  he  studies  English  litera- 
ture the  more  the  Japanese  student  must  be  astonished  at 
the  extraordinary  predominance  given  to  the  passion  of  love 
both  in  fiction  and  in  poetry.  Indeed,  by  this  time  I  have 
begun  to  feel  a  little  astonished  at  it  myself.  Of  course, 
before  I  came  to  this  country  it  seemed  to  me  quite  natural 
that  love  should  be  the  chief  subject  of  literature;  because 
I  did  not  know  anything  about  any  other  kind  of  society  ex- 
cept Western  society.  But  to-day  it  really  seems  to  me  a 
little  strange.  If  it  seems  strange  to  me,  how  much  more 
ought  it  to  seem  strange  to  you  I  Of  course,  the  simple  ex- 
planation of  the  fact  is  that  marriage  is  the  most  important 
act  of  man's  life  in  Europe  or  America,  and  that  everything 
depends  upon  it.  It  is  quite  different  on  this  side  of  the 
world.  But  the  simple  explanation  of  the  difference  is  not 
enough.  There  are  many  things  to  be  explained.  Why 
should  not  only  the  novel  writers  but  all  the  poets  make  love 
the  principal  subject  of  their  work^  I  never  knew,  because 
I  never  thought,  how  much  English  literature  was  saturated 
with  the  subject  of  love  until  I  attempted  to  make  selections 
of  poetry  and  prose  for  class  use — naturally  endeavouring  to 
select  such  pages  or  poems  as  related  to  other  subjects  than 
passion.  Instead  of  finding  a  good  deal  of  what  I  was 
looking  for,  I  could  find  scarcely  anything.  The  great  prose 
writers,  outside  of  the  essay  or  history,  are  nearly  all  fa- 
mous as  tellers  of  love  stories.  And  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  select  half  a  dozen  stanzas  of  classic  verse  from  Tennyson 
or  Rossetti  or  Browning  or  Shelley  or  Byron,  which  do  not 
contain  anything  about  kissing,  embracing,  or  longing  for 
some  imaginary  or  real  beloved.     Wordsworth,  indeed,  is 


^    '•  '  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

'something  of  an  exception;  and  Coleridge  is  most  famous  for 
a  poem  which  contains  nothing  at  all  about  love.  But  ex- 
ceptions do  not  affect  the  general  rule  that  love  is  the  theme 
of  English  poetry,  as  it  is  also  of  French,  Italian,  Spanish, 
or  German  poetry.     It  is  the  dominant  motive. 

So  with  the  English  novelists.  There  have  been  here  also 
a  few  exceptions — such  as  the  late  Robert  Louis  Stevenson, 
most  of  whose  novels  contain  little  about  women;  they  are 
chiefly  novels  or  romances  of  adventure.  But  the  excep- 
tions are  very  few.  At  the  present  time  there  are  produced 
almost  every  year  in  England  about  a  thousand  new  novels, 
and  all  of  these  or  nearly  all  are  love  stories.  To  write  a 
novel  without  a  woman  in  it  would  be  a  dangerous  under- 
taking; in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  the  book  would 
not  sell. 

Of  course  all  this  means  that  the  English  people  through- 
out the  world,  as  readers,  are  chiefly  interested  in  the  sub- 
ject under  discussion.  When  you  find  a  whole  race  inter- 
ested more  in  one  thing  than  in  anything  else,  you  may  be 
sure  that  it  is  so  because  the  subject  is  of  paramount  im- 
portance in  the  life  of  the  average  person.  You  must  try 
to  imagine  then,  a  society  in  which  every  man  must  choose 
his  wife,  and  every  woman  must  choose  her  husband,  in- 
dependent of  all  outside  help,  and  not  only  choose  but  ob- 
tain if  possible.  The  great  principle  of  Western  society 
is  that  competition  rules  here  as  it  rules  in  everything  else. 
The  best  man — that  is  to  say,  the  strongest  and  cleverest — 
is  likely  to  get  the  best  woman,  in  the  sense  of  the  most 
beautiful  person.  The  weak,  the  feeble,  the  poor,  and  the 
ugly  have  little  chance  of  being  able  to  marry  at  all.  Tens 
of  thousands  of  men  and  women  cannot  possibly  marry.  I 
am  speaking  of  the  upper  and  middle  classes.  The  work- 
ing people,  the  peasants,  the  labourers,  these  marry  young; 
but  the  competition  there  is  just  the  same  —  just  as  diflScult, 
and  only  a  little  rougher.  So  it  may  be  said  that  every 
man  has  a  struggle  of  some  kind  in  order  to  marry,  and  that 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  3 

there  is  a  kind  of  fight  or  contest  for  the  possession  of  every 
woman  worth  having.  Taking  this  view  of  Western  society, 
not  only  in  England  but  throughout  all  Europe,  you  will 
easily  be  able  to  see  why  the  Western  public  have  reason  to 
be  more  interested  in  literature  which  treats  of  love  than 
in  any  other  kind  of  literature. 

But  although  the  conditions  that  I  have  been  describing 
are  about  the  same  in  all  Western  countries,  the  tone  of 
the  literature  which  deals  with  love  is  not  at  all  the  same. 
There  are  very  great  differences.  In  prose  they  are  much 
more  serious  than  in  poetry;  because  in  all  countries  a  man 
is  allowed,  by  public  opinion,  more  freedom  in  verse  than 
in  prose.  Now  these  differences  in  the  way  of  treating  the 
subject  in  different  countries  really  indicate  national  differ- 
ences of  character.  Northern  love  stories  and  Northern 
poetry  about  love  are  very  serious;  and  these  authors  are 
kept  within  fixed  limits.  Certain  subjects  are  generally  for- 
bidden. For  example,  the  English  public  wants  novels 
about  love,  but  the  love  must  be  the  love  of  a  girl  who  is 
to  become  somebody's  wife.  The  rule  in  the  English  novel 
is  to  describe  the  pains,  fears,  and  struggles  of  the  period 
before  marriage — the  contest  in  the  world  for  the  right  of 
marriage.  A  man  must  not  write  a  novel  about  any  other 
point  of  love.  Of  course  there  are  plenty  of  authors  who 
have  broken  this  rule,  but  the  rule  still  exists.  A  man  may 
represent  a  contest  between  two  women,  one  good  and  one 
bad,  but  if  the  bad  woman  is  allowed  to  conquer  in  the 
story,  the  public  will  growl.  This  English  fashion  has  ex- 
isted since  the  eighteenth  century,  since  the  time  of  Richard- 
son, and  is  likely  to  last  for  generations  to  come. 

Now  this  is  not  the  rule  at  all  which  governs  the  making 
of  novels  in  France.  French  novels  generally  treat  of 
the  relations  of  women  to  the  world  and  to  lovers,  after 
marriage;  consequently  there  is  a  great  deal  in  French 
novels  about  adultery,  about  improper  relations  between  the 
sexes,  about  many  things  which  the  English  public  would 


4  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

not  allow.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  English  are  mor- 
ally a  better  people  than  the  French  or  other  Southern  races. 
But  it  does  mean  that  there  are  great  differences  in  the  social 
conditions.  One  such  difference  can  be  very  briefly  ex- 
pressed. An  English  girl,  an  American  girl,  a  Norwegian, 
a  Dane,  a  Swede,  is  allowed  all  possible  liberty  before  mar- 
riage. The  girl  is  told,  "You  must  be  able  to  take  care  of 
yourself,  and  not  do  wrong."  After  marriage  there  is  no 
more  such  liberty.  After  marriage  in  all  Northern  coun- 
tries a  woman's  conduct  is  strictly  watched.  But  in  France, 
and  in  Southern  countries,  the  young  girl  has  no  liberty  be- 
fore marriage.  She  is  always  under  the  guard  of  her 
brother,  her  father,  her  mother,  or  some  experienced  rela- 
tion. She  is  accompanied  wherever  she  walks.  She  is  not 
allowed  to  see  her  betrothed  except  in  the  presence  of  wit- 
nesses. But  after  marriage  her  liberty  begins.  Then  she  is 
told  for  the  first  time  that  she  must  take  care  of  herself. 
Well,  you  will  see  that  the  conditions  which  inspire  the 
novels,  in  treating  of  the  subject  of  love  and  marriage,  are 
very  different  in  Northern  and  in  Southern  Europe.  For 
this  reason  alone  the  character  of  the  novel  produced  in 
France  and  of  the  novel  produced  in  England  could  not  be 
the  same. 

You  must  remember,  however,  that  there  are  many  other 
reasons  for  this  difference — reasons  of  literary  sentiment. 
The  Southern  or  Latin  races  have  been  civilised  for  a  much 
longer  time  than  the  Northern  races;  they  have  inherited 
the  feelings  of  the  ancient  world,  the  old  Greek  and  Roman 
world,  and  they  think  still  about  the  relation  of  the  sexes 
in  very  much  the  same  way  that  the  ancient  poets  and  ro- 
mance writers  used  to  think.  And  they  can  do  things  which 
English  writers  cannot  do,  because  their  language  has  power 
of  more  delicate  expression. 

We  may  say  that  the  Latin  writers  still  speak  of  love  in 
very  much  the  same  way  that  it  was  considered  before  Chris- 
tianity.    But  when  I  speak  of  Christianity  I  am  only  refer- 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  5 

ring  to  an  historical  date.  Before  Christianity  the  North- 
em  races  also  thought  about  love  very  much  in  the  same  way 
that  their  best  poets  do  at  this  day.  The  ancient  Scandi- 
navian literature  would  show  this.  The  Viking,  the  old 
sea-pirate,  felt  very  much  as  Tennyson  or  as  Meredith 
would  feel  upon  this  subject;  he  thought  of  only  one  kind 
of  love  as  real — that  which  ends  in  marriage,  the  affection 
between  husband  and  wife.  Anything  else  was  to  him  mere 
folly  and  weakness.  Christianity  did  not  change  his  senti- 
ment on  this  subject.  The  modern  Englishman,  Swede, 
Dane,  Norwegian,  or  German  regards  love  in  exactly  that 
deep,  serious,  noble  way  that  his  pagan  ancestors  did.  I 
think  we  can  say  that  different  races  have  differences  of  feel- 
ing on  sexual  relations,  which  differences  are  very  much 
older  than  any  written  history.  They  are  in  the  blood  and 
soul  of  a  people,  and  neither  religion  nor  civilisation  can 
utterly  change  them. 

So  far  I  have  been  speaking  particularly  about  the  differ- 
ences in  English  and  French  novels;  and  a  novel  is  espe- 
cially a  reflection  of  national  life,  a  kind  of  dramatic  narra- 
tion of  truth,  in  the  form  of  a  story.  But  in  poetr}',  which 
is  the  highest  form  of  literature,  the  difference  is  much  more 
observable.  We  find  the  Latin  poets  of  to-day  writing  just 
as  freely  on  the  subject  of  love  as  the  old  Latin  poets  of 
the  age  of  Augustus,  while  Northern  poets  observe  with  few 
exceptions  great  restraint  when  treating  of  this  theme. 
Now  where  is  the  line  to  be  drawn?  Are  the  Latins  right? 
Are  the  English  right?  How  are  we  to  make  a  sharp  dis- 
tinction between  what  is  moral  and  good  and  what  is  im- 
moral and  bad  in  treating  love-subjects? 

Some  definition  must  be  attempted. 

What  is  meant  by  love?  As  used  by  Latin  writers  the 
word  has  a  range  of  meanings,  from  that  of  the  sexual  rela- 
tion between  insects  or  animals  up  to  the  highest  form  of 
religious  emotion,  called  "The  love  of  God."  I  need 
scarcely  say  that  this  definition  is  too  loose  for  our  use.     The 


6  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

English  word,  by  general  consent,  means  both  sexual  passion 
and  deep  friendship.  This  again  is  a  meaning  too  wide  for 
our  purpose.  By  putting  the  adjective  "true"  before  love, 
some  definition  is  attempted  in  ordinary  conversation. 
When  an  Englishman  speaks  of  "true  love,"  he  usually 
means  something  that  has  no  passion  at  all ;  he  means  a  per- 
fect friendship  which  grows  up  between  man  and  wife  and 
which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  passion  which  brought  the 
pair  together.  But  when  the  English  poet  speaks  of  love, 
he  generally  means  passion,  not  friendship.  I  am  only  stat- 
ing very  general  rules.  You  see  how  confusing  the  subject 
is,  how  difficult  to  define  the  matter.  Let  us  leave  the  defi- 
nition alone  for  a  moment,  and  consider  the  matter  philo- 
sophically. 

Some  very  foolish  persons  have  attempted  even  within 
recent  years  to  make  a  classification  of  different  kinds  of 
love — love  between  the  sexes.  They  talk  about  romantic 
love,  and  other  such  things.  All  that  is  utter  nonsense.  In 
the  meaning  of  sexual  affection  there  is  only  one  kind  of 
love,  the  natural  attraction  of  one  sex  for  the  other;  and 
the  only  difference  in  the  highest  form  of  this  attraction  and 
the  lowest  is  this,  that  in  the  nobler  nature  a  vast  number 
of  moral,  aesthetic,  and  ethical  sentiments  are  related  to  the 
passion,  and  that  in  lower  natures  those  sentiments  are  ab- 
sent. Therefore  we  may  say  that  even  in  the  highest  forms 
of  the  sentiment  there  is  only  one  dominant  feeling,  com- 
plex though  it  be,  the  desire  for  possession.  What  follows 
the  possession  we  may  call  love  if  we  please;  but  it  might 
better  be  called  perfect  friendship  and  sympathy.  It  is 
altogether  a  different  thing.  The  love  that  is  the  theme  of 
poets  in  all  countries  is  really  love,  not  the  friendship  that 
grows  out  of  it. 

I  suppose  you  know  that  the  etymological  meaning  of 
"passion"  is  "a  state  of  suffering."  In  regard  to  love,  the 
word  has  particular  signification  to  the  Western  mind,  for 
it  refers  to  the  time  of  struggle  and  doubt  and  longing  be- 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  7 

fore  the  object  is  attained.  Now  how  much  of  this  passion 
is  a  legitimate  subject  of  literary  art"? 

The  difficulty  may,  I  think,  be  met  by  remembering  the 
extraordinary  character  of  the  mental  phenomena  which 
manifest  themselves  in  the  time  of  passion.  There  is  dur- 
ing that  time  a  strange  illusion,  an  illusion  so  wonderful 
that  it  has  engaged  the  attention  of  great  philosophers  for 
thousands  of  years;  Plato,  you  know,  tried  to  explain  it  in 
a  very  famous  theory.  I  mean  the  illusion  that  seems  to 
change,  or  rather,  actually  does  change  the  senses  of  a  man 
at  a  certain  time.  To  his  eye  a  certain  face  has  suddenly 
become  the  most  beautiful  object  in  the  world.  To  his  ears 
the  accents  of  one  voice  become  the  sweetest  of  all  music. 
Reason  has  nothing  to  do  with  this,  and  reason  has  no  power 
against  the  enchantment.  Out  of  Nature's  mystery,  some- 
how or  other,  this  strange  magic  suddenly  illuminates  the 
senses  of  a  man;  then  vanishes  again,  as  noiselessly  as  it 
came.  It  is  a  very  ghostly  thing,  and  cannot  be  explained 
by  any  theory  not  of  a  very  ghostly  kind.  Even  Herbert 
Spencer  has  devoted  his  reasoning  to  a  new  theory  about  it. 
I  need  not  go  further  in  this  particular  than  to  tell  you  that 
in  a  certain  way  passion  is  now  thought  to  have  somethin^g 
to  do  with  other  lives  than  the  present;  in  short,  it  is  a  kind 
of  organic  memory  of  relations  that  existed  in  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  former  states  of  being.  Right  or 
wrong  though  the  theories  may  be,  this  mysterious  moment 
of  love,  the  period  of  this  illusion,  is  properly  the  subject 
of  high  poetry,  simply  because  it  is  the  most  beautiful  and 
the  most  wonderful  experience  of  a  human  life.     And  why? 

Because  in  the  brief  time  of  such  passion  the  very  highest 
and  finest  emotions  of  which  human  nature  is  capable  are 
brought  into  play.  In  that  time  more  than  at  any  other 
hour  in  life  do  men  become  unselfish,  unselfish  at  least  to- 
ward one  human  being.  Not  only  unselfishness  but  self- 
sacrifice  is  a  desire  peculiar  to  the  period.  The  young  man 
in  love  is  not  merely  willing  to  give  away  everything  that 


8  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

he  possesses  to  the  person  beloved;  he  wishes  to  suffer  pain, 
to  meet  danger,  to  risk  his  life  for  her  sake.  Therefore 
Tennyson,  in  speaking  of  that  time,  beautifully  said : 

Love  took  up  the  harp  of  Life,  and  smote  on  all  the  chords  with 

might. 
Smote  the  chord  of  Self,  that,  trembling,  pass'd  in  music  out  of  sight. 

Unselfishness  is,  of  course,  a  very  noble  feeling,  inde- 
pendently of  the  cause.  But  this  is  only  one  of  the  emo- 
tions of  a  higher  class  when  powerfully  aroused.  There  is 
pity,  tenderness — the  same  kind  of  tenderness  that  one  feels 
toward  a  child — the  love  of  the  helpless,  the  desire  to  pro- 
tect. And  a  third  sentiment  felt  at  such  a  time  more 
strongly  than  at  any  other,  is  the  sentiment  of  duty ;  respon- 
sibilities moral  and  social  are  then  comprehended  in  a  totally 
new  way.  Surely  none  can  dispute  these  facts  nor  the 
beauty  of  them. 

Moral  sentiments  are  the  highest  of  all ;  but  next  to  them 
the  sentiment  of  beauty  in  itself,  the  artistic  feeling,  is  also 
a  very  high  form  of  intellectual  and  even  of  secondary  moral 
experience.  Scientifically  there  is  a  relation  between  the 
beautiful  and  the  good,  between  the  physically  perfect  and 
the  ethically  perfect.  Of  course  it  is  not  absolute.  There 
is  nothing  absolute  in  this  world.  But  the  relation  exists. 
Whoever  can  comprehend  the  highest  form  of  one  kind  of 
beauty  must  be  able  to  comprehend  something  of  the  other. 
I  know  very  well  that  the  ideal  of  the  love-season  is  an 
illusion;  in  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  the 
thousand  the  beauty  of  the  woman  is  only  imagined.  But 
does  that  make  any  possible  difference?  I  do  not  think  that 
it  does.  To  imagine  beauty  is  really  to  see  it — not  ob- 
jectively, perhaps,  but  subjectively  beyond  all  possibility  of 
doubt.  Though  you  see  the  beauty  only  in  your  mind,  in 
your  mind  it  is;  and  in  your  mind  its  ethical  influence  must 
operate.  During  the  time  that  a  man  worships  even  imag- 
inary bodily  beauty,  he  receives  some  secret  glimpse  of  a 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  9 

higher  kind  of  beauty — beauty  of  heart  and  mind.  Was 
there  ever  in  this  world  a  real  lover  who  did  not  believe  the 
woman  of  his  choice  to  be  not  only  the  most  beautiful  of 
mortals,  but  also  the  best  in  a  moral  sense"?  I  do  not  think 
that  there  ever  was. 

The  moral  and  the  ethical  sentiments  of  a  being  thus 
aroused  call  into  sudden  action  all  the  finer  energies  of  the 
man — the  capacities  for  effort,  for  heroism,  for  high  pressure 
work  of  any  sort,  mental  or  physical,  for  all  that  requires 
quickness  in  thought  and  exactitude  in  act.  There  is  for 
the  time  being  a  sense  of  new  power.  Anything  that  makes 
strong  appeal  to  the  best  exercise  of  one's  faculties  is  benefi- 
cent and,  in  most  cases,  worthy  of  reverence.  Indeed,  it  is 
in  the  short  season  of  which  I  am  speaking  that  we  always 
discover  the  best  of  everything  in  the  character  of  woman 
or  of  man.  In  that  period  the  evil  qualities,  the  ungenerous 
side,  is  usually  kept  as  much  out  of  sight  as  possible. 

Now  for  all  these  suggested  reasons,  as  for  many  others 
which  might  be  suggested,  the  period  of  illusion  in  love  is 
really  the  period  which  poets  and  writers  of  romance  are 
naturally  justified  in  describing.  Can  they  go  beyond  it 
with  safety,  with  propriety?  That  depends  very  much  upon 
whether  they  go  up  or  down.  By  going  up  I  mean  keeping 
within  the  region  of  moral  idealism.  By  going  down  I 
mean  descending  to  the  level  of  merely  animal  realism.  In 
this  realism  there  is  nothing  deserving  the  highest  effort  of 
art  of  any  sort. 

What  is  the  object  of  art?  Is  it  not,  or  should  it  not 
be,  to  make  us  imagine  better  conditions  than  that  which 
at  present  exist  in  the  world,  and  by  so  imagining  to  prepare 
the  way  for  the  coming  of  such  conditions?  I  think  that 
all  great  art  has  done  this.  Do  you  remember  the  old  story 
about  Greek  mothers  keeping  in  their  rooms  the  statue  of  a 
god  or  a  man,  more  beautiful  than  anything  real,  so  that 
their  imagination  might  be  constantly  influenced  by  the 
sight  of  beauty,  and  that  they  might  perhaps  be  able  to 


10  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

bring  more  beautiful  children  into  the  worlds  Among  the 
Arabs,  mothers  also  do  something  of  this  kind,  only,  as  they 
have  no  art  of  imagery,  they  go  to  nature  herself  for  the 
living  image.  Black  luminous  eyes  are  beautiful,  and 
wives  keep  in  their  tents  a  little  deer,  the  gazelle,  which  is 
famous  for  the  brilliancy  and  beauty  of  its  eyes.  By  con- 
stantly looking  at  this  charming  pet  the  Arab  wife  hopes  to 
bring  into  the  world  some  day  a  child  with  eyes  as  beautiful 
as  the  eyes  of  the  gazelle.  Well,  the  highest  function  of 
art  ought  to  do  for  us,  or  at  least  for  the  world,  what  the 
statue  and  the  gazelle  were  expected  to  do  ior  Grecian  and 
Arab  mothers — to  make  possible  higher  conditions  than  the 
existing  ones. 

So  much  being  said,  consider  again  the  place  and  the 
meaning  of  the  passion  of  love  in  any  human  life.  It  is 
essentially  a  period  of  idealism,  of  imagining  better  things 
and  conditions  than  are  possible  in  this  world.  For  every- 
body who  has  been  in  love  has  imagined  something  higher 
than  the  possible  and  the  present.  Any  idealism  is  a  proper 
subject  for  art.  It  is  not  at  all  the  same  in  the  case  of  real- 
ism. Grant  that  all  this  passion,  imagination,  and  fine 
sentiment  is  based  upon  a  very  simple  animal  impulse. 
That  does  not  make  the  least  difference  in  the  value  of  the 
highest  results  of  that  passion.  We  might  say  the  very 
same  thing  about  any  human  emotion;  every  emotion  can 
be  evolutionally  traced  back  to  simple  and  selfish  impulses 
shared  by  man  with  the  lower  animals.  But  because  an 
apple  tree  or  a  pear  tree  happens  to  have  its  roots  in  the 
ground,  does  that  mean  that  its  fruits  are  not  beautiful  and 
wholesome'?  Most  assuredly  we  must  not  judge  the  fruit 
of  the  tree  from  the  unseen  roots;  but  what  about  turning 
up  the  ground  to  look  at  the  roots?  What  becomes  of  the 
beauty  of  the  tree  when  you  do  that'?  The  realist — at  least 
the  French  realist — likes  to  do  that.  He  likes  to  bring  back 
the  attention  of  his  reader  to  the  lowest  rather  than  to  the 
highest,  to  that  which  should  be  kept  hidden,  for  the  very- 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  11 

same  reason  that  the  roots  of  a  tree  should  be  kept  under- 
ground if  the  tree  is  to  live. 

The  time  of  illusion,  then,  is  the  beautiful  moment  of 
passion;  it  represents  the  artistic  zone  in  which  the  poet  or 
romance  writer  ought  to  be  free  to  do  the  very  best  that  he 
can.  He  may  go  beyond  that  zone;  but  then  he  has  only 
two  directions  in  which  he  can  travel.  Above  it  there  is 
religion,  and  an  artist  may,  like  Dante,  succeed  in  trans- 
forming love  into  a  sentiment  of  religious  ecstasy.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  artist  could  do  that  to-day;  this  is  not  an 
age  of  religious  ecstasy.  But  upwards  there  is  no  other  way 
to  go.  Downwards  the  artist  may  travel  until  he  finds  him- 
self in  hell.  Between  the  zone  of  idealism  and  the  brutal- 
ity of  realism  there  are  no  doubt  many  gradations.  I  am 
only  indicating  what  I  think  to  be  an  absolute  truth,  that 
in  treating  of  love  the  literary  master  should  keep  to  the 
period  of  illusion,  and  that  to  go  below  it  is  a  dangerous 
undertaking.  And  now,  having  tried  to  make  what  are  be- 
lieved to  be  proper  distinctions  between  great  literature  on 
this  subject  and  all  that  is  not  great,  we  may  begin  to  study 
a  few  examples.  I  am  going  to  select  at  random  passages 
from  English  poets  and  others,  illustrating  my  meaning. 

Tennyson  is  perhaps  the  most  familiar  to  you  among 
poets  of  our  own  time;  and  he  has  given  a  few  exquisite  ex- 
amples of  the  ideal  sentiment  in  passion.  One  is  a  con- 
cluding verse  in  the  beautiful  song  that  occurs  in  the  mono- 
drama  of  "Maud,"  where  the  lover,  listening  in  the  garden, 
hears  the  steps  of  his  beloved  approaching. 

She  is  coming,  my  own,  my  sweet, 

Were  it  ever  so  airy  a  tread, 
My  heart  would  hear  her  and  beat, 

Were  it  earth  in  an  earthy  bed ; 
My  dust  would  hear  her  and  beat, 

Had  I  lain  for  a  century  dead ; 
Would  start  and  tremble  under  her  feet, 

And  blossom  in  purple  and  red. 


12  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

This  is  a  very  fine  instance  of  the  purely  ideal  emotion — 
extravagant,  if  you  like,  in  the  force  of  the  imagery  used, 
but  absolutely  sincere  and  true;  for  the  imagination  of  love 
is  necessarily  extravagant.  It  would  be  quite  useless  to  ask 
whether  the  sound  of  a  girl's  footsteps  could  really  waken 
a  dead  man;  we  know  that  love  can  fancy  such  things  quite 
naturally,  not  in  one  country  only  but  everywhere.  An 
Arabian  poem  written  long  before  the  time  of  Mohammed 
contains  exactly  the  same  thought  in  simpler  words;  and  I 
think  that  there  are  some  old  Japanese  songs  containing 
something  similar.  All  that  the  statement  really  means  is 
that  the  voice,  the  look,  the  touch,  even  the  footstep  of  the 
woman  beloved  have  come  to  possess  for  the  lover  a  signifi- 
cance as  great  as  life  and  death.  For  the  moment  he  knows 
no  other  divinity ;  she  is  his  god,  in  the  sense  that  her  power 
over  him  has  become  infinite  and  iriesistible. 

The  second  example  may  be  furnished  from  another  part 
of  the  same  composition — the  little  song  of  exaltation  after 
the  promise  to  marry  has  been  given. 

0  let  the  solid  ground 
Not  fail  beneath  my  feet 

Before  my  life  has  found 

What  some  have  found  so  sweet ; 
Then  let  come  what  come  may, 
What  matter  if  I  go  mad, 

1  shall  have  had  my  day. 

Let  the  sweet  heavens  endure, 
Not  close  and  darken  above  me 

Before  I  am  quite,  quite  sure 
That  there  is  one  to  love  me ; 

Then  let  come  what  come  may 

To  a  life  that  has  been  so  sad, 

I  shall  have  had  my  day. 

The  feeling  of  the  lover  is  that  no  matter  what  happens 
afterwards,  the  winning  of  the  woman  is  enough  to  pay  for 
life,  death,  pain,  or  anything  else.     One  of  the  most  re- 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  13 

markable  phenomena  of  the  illusion  is  the  supreme  indif- 
ference to  consequences — at  least  to  any  consequences  which 
would  not  signify  moral  shame  or  loss  of  honour.  Of 
course  the  poet  is  supposed  to  consider  the  emotion  only  in 
generous  natures.  But  the  subject  of  this  splendid  indiffer- 
ence has  been  more  wonderfully  treated  by  Victor  Hugo 
than  by  Tennyson — as  we  shall  see  later  on,  when  consider- 
ing another  phase  of  the  emotion.  Before  doing  that,  I 
want  to  call  your  attention  to  a  very  charming  treatment  of 
love's  romance  by  an  American.  It  is  one  of  the  most  deli- 
cate of  modem  compositions,  and  it  is  likely  to  become  a 
classic,  as  it  has  already  been  printed  in  four  or  five  different 
anthologies.     The  title  is  "Atalanta's  Race." 

First  let  me  tell  you  the  story  of  Atalanta,  so  that  you 
will  be  better  able  to  see  the  fine  symbolism  of  the  poem. 
Atalanta,  the  daughter  of  a  Greek  king,  was  not  only  the 
most  beautiful  of  maidens,  but  the  swiftest  runner  in  the 
world.  She  passed  her  time  in  hunting,  and  did  not  wish 
to  marry.  But  as  many  men  wanted  to  marry  her,  a  law 
was  passed  that  any  one  who  desired  to  win  her  must  run 
a  race  with  her.  If  he  could  beat  her  in  running,  then  she 
promised  to  marry  him,  but  if  he  lost  the  race,  he  was  to  be 
killed.  Some  say  that  the  man  was  allowed  to  run  first, 
and  that  the  girl  followed  with  a  spear  in  her  hand  and 
killed  him  when  she  overtook  him.  There  are  different  ac- 
counts of  the  contest.  Many  suitors  lost  the  race  and  were 
killed.  But  finally  a  young  man  called  Hippomenes  ob- 
tained from  the  Goddess  of  Love  three  golden  apples,  and 
he  was  told  that  if  he  dropped  these  apples  while  running, 
the  girl  would  stop  to  pick  them  up,  and  that  in  this  way 
he  might  be  able  to  win  the  race.  So  he  ran,  and  when  he 
found  himself  about  to  be  beaten,  he  dropped  one  apple. 
She  stopped  to  pick  it  up  and  thus  he  gained  a  little.  In 
this  way  he  won  the  race  and  married  Atalanta.  Greek 
mythology  says  that  afterwards  she  and  her  husband  were 
turned  into  lions  because  they  offended  the  gods;  however, 


14*  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

that  need  not  concern  us  here.  There  is  a  very  beautiful 
moral  in  the  old  Greek  story,  and  the  merit  of  the  American 
composition  is  that  its  author,  Maurice  Thompson,  perceived 
this  moral  and  used  it  to  illustrate  a  great  philosophical 
truth. 

When  Spring  grows  old,  and  sleepy  winds 

Set  from  the  South  with  odours  sweet, 
I  see  my  love,  in  green,  cool  groves, 

Speed  down  dusk  aisles  on  shining  feet. 

She  throws  a  kiss  and  bids  me  run, 

In  whispers  sweet  as  roses'  breath; 
I  know  I  cannot  win  the  race. 

And  at  the  end,  I  know,  is  death. 

But  joyfully  I  bare  my  limbs. 

Anoint  me  with  the  tropic  breeze, 
And  feel  through  every  sinew  run 

The  vigour  of  Hippomenes. 

O  race  of  love!  we  all  have  run 

Thy  happy  course  through  groves  of  Spring, 

And  cared  not,  when  at  last  we  lost, 
For  life  or  death,  or  anything ! 

There  are  a  few  thoughts  here  requiring  a  little  comment. 
You  know  that  the  Greek  games  and  athletic  contests  were 
held  in  the  fairest  season,  and  that  the  contestants  were 
stripped.  They  were  also  anointed  with  oil,  partly  to  pro- 
tect the  skin  against  sun  and  temperature  and  partly  to  make 
the  body  more  supple.  The  poet  speaks  of  the  young  man 
as  being  anointed  by  the  warm  wind  of  Spring,  the  tropic 
season  of  life.  It  is  a  very  pretty  fancy.  What  he  is  really 
telling  us  is  this : 

"There  are  no  more  Greek  games,  but  the  race  of  love  is 
still  run  to-day  as  in  times  gone  by;  youth  is  the  season,  and 
the  atmosphere  of  youth  is  the  anointing  of  the  contestant." 

But  the  moral  of  the  piece  is  its  great  charm,  the  poetical 
statement  of  a  beautiful  and  a  wonderful  fact.  In  almost 
every  life  there  is  a  time  when  we  care  for  only  one  person. 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  15 

and  suffer  much  for  that  person's  sake;  yet  in  that  period 
we  do  not  care  whether  we  suffer  or  die,  and  in  after  life, 
when  we  look  back  at  those  hours  of  youth,  we  wonder  at 
the  way  in  which  we  then  felt.  In  European  life  of  to-day 
the  old  Greek  fable  is  still  true ;  almost  everybody  must  run 
Atalanta's  race  and  abide  by  the  result. 

One  of  the  delightful  phases  of  the  illusion  of  love  is 
the  sense  of  old  acquaintance,  the  feeling  as  if  the  person 
loved  had  been  known  and  loved  long  ago  in  some  time  and 
place  forgotten.  I  think  you  must  have  observed,  many  of 
you,  that  when  the  senses  of  sight  and  hearing  happen  to  be 
strongly  stirred  by  some  new  and  most  pleasurable  experi- 
ence, the  feeling  of  novelty  is  absent,  or  almost  absent. 
You  do  not  feel  as  if  you  were  seeing  or  hearing  something 
new,  but  as  if  you  saw  or  heard  something  that  you  knew 
all  about  very  long  ago.  I  remember  once  travelling  with 
a  Japanese  boy  into  a  charming  little  country  town  in 
Shikoku — and  scarcely  had  we  entered  the  main  street,  than 
he  cried  out:  "Oh,  I  have  seen  this  place  before  I"  Of 
course  he  had  not  seen  it  before;  he  was  from  Osaka  and  had 
never  left  the  great  city  until  then.  But  the  pleasure  of 
his  new  experience  had  given  him  this  feeling  of  familiarity 
with  the  unfamiliar.  I  do  not  pretend  to  explain  this  fa- 
miliarity with  the  new — it  is  a  great  mystery  still,  just  as 
it  was  a  great  mystery  to  the  Roman  Cicero.  But  almost 
everybody  that  has  been  in  love  has  probably  had  the  same 
feeling  during  a  moment  or  two — the  feeling  "I  have  known 
that  woman  before,"  though  the  where  and  the  when  are 
mysteries.  Some  of  the  modern  poets  have  beautifully 
treated  this  feeling.  The  best  example  that  I  can  give  you 
is  the  exquisite  lyric  by  Rossetti  entitled  "Sudden  Light." 

I  have  been  here  before. 

But  when  or  how  I  cannot  tell : 
I  know  the  grass  beyond  the  door, 

The  sweet  keen  smell, 
The  sighing  sound,  the  lights  around  the  shore. 


16  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

You  have  been  mine  before, — 

How  long  ago  I  may  not  know : 
But  just  when  at  that  swallow's  soar 

Your  neck  turn'd  so. 
Some  veil  did  fall, — I  knew  it  all  of  yore. 

Has  this  been  thus  before  ? 

And  shall  not  thus  time's  eddying  flight 
Still  with  our  lives  our  loves  restore 

In  death's  despite, 
And  day  and  night  yield  one  delight  once  more? 

I  think  you  will  acknowledge  that  this  is  very  pretty ;  and 
the  same  poet  has  treated  the  idea  equally  well  in  other 
poems  of  a  more  complicated  kind.  But  another  poet  of 
the  period  was  haunted  even  more  than  Rossetti  by  this 
idea — Arthur  O'Shaughnessy.  Like  Rossetti  he  was  a 
great  lover,  and  very  unfortunate  in  his  love;  and  he  wrote 
his  poems,  now  famous,  out  of  the  pain  and  regret  that  was 
in  his  heart,  much  as  singing  birds  born  in  cages  are  said  to 
sing  better  when  their  eyes  are  put  out.  Here  is  one 
example : 

Along  the  garden  ways  just  now 

I  heard  the  flowers  speak ; 
The  white  rose  told  me  of  your  brow, 

The  red  rose  of  your  cheek  ; 
The  lily  of  your  bended  head, 

The  bindweed  of  your  hair : 
Each  looked  its  loveliest  and  said 

You  were  more  fair. 

I  went  into  the  woods  anon. 

And  heard  the  wild  birds  sing 
How  sweet  you  were ;  they  warbled  on. 

Piped,  trill'd  the  self-same  thing. 
Thrush,  blackbird,  linnet,  without  pause 

The  burden  did  repeat. 
And  still  began  again  because 

You  were  more  sweet. 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  IT 

And  then  I  went  down  to  the  sea, 

And  heard  it  murmuring  too, 
Part  of  an  ancient  mystery, 

All  made  of  me  and  you : 
How  many  a  thousand  years  ago 

I  loved,  and  you  were  sweet — 
Longer  I  could  not  stay,  and  so 

I  fled  back  to  your  feet. 

The  last  stanza  especially  expresses  the  idea  that  I  have 
been  telling  you  about;  but  in  a  poem  entitled  "Greater 
Memory"  the  idea  is  much  more  fully  expressed.  By 
"greater  memory"  you  must  understand  the  memory  beyond 
this  life  into  past  stages  of  existence.  This  piece  has  be- 
come a  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  poetry  that  will  live ; 
and  a  few  of  the  best  stanzas  deserve  to  be  quoted. 

In  the  heart  there  lay  buried  for  years 
Love's  story  of  passion  and  tears; 
Of  the  heaven  that  two  had  begun 

And  the  horror  that  tore  them  apart; 
When  one  was  love's  slayer,  but  one 

Made  a  grave  for  the  love  in  his  heart. 

The  long  years  pass'd  weary  and  lone 

And  it  lay  there  and  changed  there  unknown ; 

Then  one  day  from  its  innermost  place. 

In  the  shamed  and  ruin'd  love's  stead, 
Love  arose  with  a  glorified  face. 

Like  an  angel  that  comes  from  the  dead. 

It  uplifted  the  stone  that  was  set 

On  that  tomb  which  the  heart  held  yet ; 

But  the  sorrow  had  moulder'd  within, 

And  there  came  from  the  long  closed  door 
A  dear  image,  that  was  not  the  sin 

Or  the  grief  that  lay  buried  before. 

There  was  never  the  stain  of  a  tear 
On  the  face  that  was  ever  so  dear; 
'Twas  the  same  in  each  lovelier  way; 
'Twas  old  love's  holier  part, 


18  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

And  the  dream  of  the  earliest  day 
Brought  back  to  the  desolate  heart. 

It  was  knowledge  of  all  that  had  been 

In  the  thought,  in  the  soul  unseen ; 

'Twas  the  word  which  the  lips  could  not  say 

To  redeem  or  recover  the  past. 
It  was  more  than  was  taken  away 

Which  the  heart  got  back  at  the  last. 

The  passion  that  lost  its  spell, 
The  rose  that  died  where  it  fell. 
The  look  that  was  look'd  in  vain. 

The  prayer  that  seemed  lost  evermore, 
They  were  found  in  the  heart  again, 

With  all  that  the  heart  would  restore. 

Put  into  less  mystical  language  the  legend  is  this:  A 
young  man  and  a  young  woman  loved  each  other  for  a  time ; 
then  they  were  separated  by  some  great  wrong — we  may 
suppose  the  woman  was  untrue.  The  man  always  loved 
her  memory,  in  spite  of  this  wrong  which  she  had  done. 
The  two  died  and  were  buried;  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
years  they  remained  buried,  and  the  dust  of  them  mixed 
with  the  dust  of  the  earth.  But  in  the  perpetual  order  of 
things,  a  pure  love  never  can  die,  though  bodies  may  die 
and  pass  away.  So  after  many  generations  the  pure  love 
which  this  man  had  for  a  bad  woman  was  born  again  in  the 
heart  of  another  man — the  same,  yet  not  the  same.  And 
the  spirit  of  the  woman  that  long  ago  had  done  the  wrong, 
also  found  incarnation  again;  and  the  two  meeting,  are 
drawn  to  each  other  by  what  people  call  love,  but  what  is 
really  Greater  Memory,  the  recollection  of  past  lives.  But 
now  all  is  happiness  for  them,  because  the  weaker  and  worse 
part  of  each  has  really  died  and  has  been  left  hundreds  of 
years  behind,  and  only  the  higher  nature  has  been  born 
again.  All  that  ought  not  to  have  been  is  not;  but  all  that 
ought  to  be  now  is.  This  is  really  an  evolutionary  teach- 
ing, but  it  is  also  poetical  license,  for  the  immoral  side  of 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  19 

mankind  does  not  by  any  means  die  so  quickly  as  the  poet 
supposes.  It  is  perhaps  a  question  of  many  tens  ot  thou- 
sands of  years  to  get  rid  of  a  few  of  our  simpler  faults. 
Anyway,  the  fancy  charms  us  and  tempts  us  really  to  hope 
that  these  things  might  be  so. 

While  the  poets  of  our  time  so  extend  the  history  of  a 
love  backwards  beyond  this  life,  we  might  expect  them  to 
do  the  very  same  thing  in  the  other  direction.  I  do  not 
refer  to  reunion  in  heaven,  or  anything  of  that  sort,  but 
simply  to  affection  continued  after  death.  There  are  some 
very  pretty  fancies  of  the  kind.  But  they  cannot  prove  to 
you  quite  so  interesting  as  the  poems  which  treat  the  recol- 
lection of  past  life.  When  we  consider  the  past  imag- 
inatively, we  have  some  ground  to  stand  on.  The  past  has 
been — there  is  no  doubt  about  that.  The  fact  that  we  are 
at  this  moment  alive  makes  it  seem  sufficiently  true  that 
we  were  alive  thousands  or  millions  of  years  ago.  But 
when  we  turn  to  the  future  for  poetical  inspiration,  the 
case  is  very  different.  There  we  must  imagine  without 
having  anything  to  stand  upon  in  the  way  of  experience. 
Of  course  if  born  again  into  a  body  we  could  imagine  many 
things;  but  there  is  the  ghostly  interval  between  death  and 
birth  which  nobody  is  able  to  tell  us  about.  Here  the  poet 
depends  upon  dream  experiences,  and  it  is  of  such  an  ex- 
perience that  Christina  Rossetti  speaks  in  her  beautiful  poem 
entitled  "A  Pause." 

They  made  the  chamber  sweet  with  flowers  and  leaves, 
And  the  bed  sweet  with  flowers  on  which  I  lay, 
While  my  soul,  love-bound,  loitered  on  its  way. 

I  did  not  hear  the  birds  about  the  eaves, 

Nor  hear  the  reapers  talk  among  the  sheaves : 
Only  my  soul  kept  wp.tch  from  day  to  day, 
My  thirsty  soul  kept  watch  for  one  away : — 

Perhaps  he  loves,  I  thought,  remembers,  grieves. 

At  length  there  came  the  step  upon  the  stair. 
Upon  the  lock  the  old  familiar  hand : 


20  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

Then  first  my  spirit  seemed  to  scent  the  air 

Of  Paradise ;  then  first  the  tardy  sand 
Of  time  ran  golden ;  and  I  felt  my  hair 

Put  on  a  glory,  and  my  soul  expand. 

The  woman  is  dead.  In  the  room  where  her  body  died, 
flowers  have  been  placed,  offerings  to  the  dead.  Also  there 
are  flowers  upon  the  bed.  The  ghost  of  the  woman  ob- 
serves all  this,  but  she  does  not  feel  either  glad  or  sad 
because  of  it;  she  is  thinking  only  of  the  living  lover,  who 
was  not  there  when  she  died,  but  far  away.  She  wants  to 
know  whether  he  really  loved  her,  whether  he  will  really  be 
sorry  to  hear  that  she  is  dead.  Outside  the  room  of  death 
the  birds  are  singing;  in  the  fields  beyond  the  windows 
peasants  are  working,  and  talking  as  they  work.  But  the 
ghost  does  not  listen  to  these  sounds.  The  ghost  remains 
in  the  room  only  for  love's  sake;  she  cannot  go  away  until 
the  lover  comes.  At  last  she  hears  him  coming.  She  knows 
the  sound  of  the  step;  she  knows  the  touch  of  the  hand 
upon  the  lock  of  the  door.  And  instantly,  before  she  sees 
him  at  all,  she  first  feels  delight.  Already  it  seems  to  her 
that  she  can  smell  the  perfume  of  the  flowers  of  heaven;  it 
then  seems  to  her  that  about  her  head,  as  about  the  head  of 
an  angel,  a  circle  of  glory  is  shaping  itself,  and  the  real 
heaven,  the  Heaven  of  Love,  is  at  hand. 

How  very  beautiful  this  is.  There  is  still  one  line  which 
requires  a  separate  explanation  —  I  mean  the  sentence  about 
"  the  sands  of  time  running  golden."  Perhaps  you  may 
remember  the  same  simile  in  Tennyson's  "Locksley  Hall  " : 

Love  took  up  the  glass  of  Time,  and  turn'd  it  in  his  glowing  hands ; 
Every  moment,  lightly  shaken,  ran  itself  in  golden  sands. 

Here  time  is  identified  with  the  sand  of  the  hour  glass, 
and  the  verb  "to  run"  is  used  because  this  verb  com- 
monly expresses  the  trickling  of  the  sand  from  the  upper 
part  of  the  glass  into  the  lower.  In  other  words,  fine  sand 
"runs"  just  like  water.     To  say  that  the  "sands  of  time 


ON  LOVE  IN, ENGLISH  POETRY  ^1 

ran  golden,"  or  become  changed  into  gold,  is  only  a  poetical 
way  of  stating  that  the  time  becomes  more  than  happy — 
almost  heavenly  or  divine.  And  now  you  will  see  how 
very  beautiful  the  comparison  becomes  in  this  little  poem 
about  the  ghost  of  the  woman  waiting  for  the  coming  step 
of  her  lover. 

Several  other  aspects  of  the  emotion  may  now  be  con- 
sidered separately.  One  of  these,  an  especially  beautiful 
one,  is  memory.  Of  course,  there  are  many  aspects  of 
love's  memories,  some  all  happiness,  others  intensely  sor- 
rowful— the  memory  of  a  walk,  a  meeting,  a  moment  of 
good-bye.  Such  memories  occupy  a  very  large  place  in  the 
treasure  house  of  English  love  poems.  I  am  going  to  give 
three  examples  only,  but  each  of  a  different  kind.  The 
first  poet  that  I  am  going  to  mention  is  Coventry  Patmore, 
He  wrote  two  curious  books  of  poetry,  respectively  called 
"The  Angel  in  the  House"  and  "The  Unknown  Eros." 
In  the  first  of  these  books  he  wrote  the  whole  history  of  his 
courtship  and  marriage — a  very  dangerous  thing  for  a  poet 
to  do,  but  he  did  it  successfully.  The  second  volume  is 
miscellaneous,  and  contains  some  very  beautiful  things.  I 
am  going  to  quote  only  a  few  lines  from  the  piece  called 
"Amelia."  This  piece  is  the  story  of  an  evening  spent  with 
a  sweetheart,  and  the  lines  which  I  am  quoting  refer  to  the 
moment  of  taking  the  girl  home.  They  are  now  rather 
famous : 

.  .  .  To  the  dim  street 

I  led  her  sacred  feet ; 

And  so  the  Daughter  gave, 

Soft,  moth-like,  sweet, 

Showy  as  damask-rose  and  shy  as  musk, 

Back  to  her  Mother,  anxious  in  the  dusk. 

And  now  "Good  Night !" 

Why  should  the  poet  speak  of  the  girl  in  this  way? 
Why  does  he  call  her  feet  sacred'?  She  has  just  promised 
to  marry  him ;  and  now  she  seems  to  him  quite  divine.     But 


22  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

he  discovers  very  plain  words  with  which  to  communicate 
his  finer  feelings  to  the  reader.  The  street  is  "dim"  because 
it  is  night;  and  in  the  night  the  beautifully  dressed  maiden 
seems  like  a  splendid  moth — the  name  given  to  night  butter- 
flies in  England.  In  England  the  moths  are  much  more 
beautiful  than  the  true  butterflies;  they  have  wings  of  scar- 
let and  purple  and  brown  and  gold.  So  the  comparison, 
though  peculiarly  English,  is  very  fine.  Also  there  is  a 
suggestion  of  the  soundlessness  of  the  moth's  flight.  Now 
"showy  as  damask  rose"  is  a  striking  simile  only  because 
the  damask-rose  is  a  wonderfully  splendid  flower — richest 
in  colour  of  all  roses  in  English  gardens.  "Shy  as  musk" 
is  rather  a  daring  simile.  "Musk"  is  a  perfume  used  by 
English  as  well  as  Japanese  ladies,  but  there  is  no  perfume 
which  must  be  used  with  more  discretion,  carefulness.  If 
you  use  ever  so  little  too  much,  the  effect  is  not  pleasant. 
But  if  you  use  exactly  the  proper  quantity,  and  no  more, 
there  is  no  perfume  which  is  more  lovely.  "Shy  as  musk" 
thus  refers  to  that  kind  of  girlish  modesty  which  never  com- 
mits a  fault  even  by  the  measure  of  a  grain — a  beautiful 
shyness  incapable  of  being  anything  but  beautiful.  Never- 
theless the  comparison  must  be  confessed  one  which  should 
be  felt  rather  than  explained. 

The  second  of  the  three  promised  quotations  shall  be  from 
Robert  Browning.  There  is  one  feeling,  not  often  touched 
upon  by  poets,  yet  peculiar  to  lovers,  that  is  here  treated 
— the  desire  when  you  are  very  happy  or  when  you  are  look- 
ing at  anything  attractive  to  share  the  pleasure  of  the 
moment  with  the  beloved.  But  it  seldom  happens  that  the 
wish  and  the  conditions  really  meet.  Referring  to  this 
longing  Browning  made  a  short  lyric  that  is  now  a  classic; 
it  is  among  the  most  dainty  things  of  the  century. 

Never  the  time  and  the  place 

And  the  loved  one  all  together ! 
This  path — how  soft  to  pace! 

This  May — what  magic  weather! 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  23 

Where  is  the  loved  one's  face? 

In  a  dream  that  loved  one's  face  meets  mine 

But  the  house  is  narrow,  the  place  is  bleak. 

Where,  outside,  rain  and  wind  combine 

With  a  furtive  ear,  if  I  try  to  speak. 

With  a  hostile  eye  at  my  flushing  cheek 

With  a  malice  that  marks  each  word,  each  sign! 

Never  can  we  have  things  the  way  we  wish  in  this  world 
— a  beautiful  day,  a  beautiful  place,  and  the  presence  of 
the  beloved  all  at  the  same  time.  Something  is  always 
missing;  if  the  place  be  beautiful,  the  weather  perhaps  is 
bad.  Or  if  the  weather  and  the  place  both  happen  to  be 
perfect,  the  woman  is  absent.  So  the  poet  finding  himself 
in  some  very  beautiful  place,  and  remembering  this,  remem- 
bers also  the  last  time  that  he  met  the  woman  beloved,  It 
was  a  small  dark  house  and  chilly;  outside  there  was  rain 
and  storm;  and  the  sounds  of  the  wind  and  of  the  rain 
were  as  the  sounds  of  people  secretly  listening,  or  sounds 
of  people  trying  to  look  in  secretly  through  the  windows. 
Evidently  it  was  necessary  that  the  meeting  should  be 
secret,  and  it  was  not  altogether  as  happy  as  could  have 
been  wished. 

The  third  example  is  a  very  beautiful  poem;  we  must 
content  ourselves  with  an  extract  from  it.  It  is  the  memory 
of  a  betrothal  day,  and  the  poet  is  Frederick  Tennyson.  I 
suppose  you  know  that  there  were  three  Tennysons,  and 
although  Alfred  happened  to  be  the  greatest,  all  of  them 
were  good  poets. 

It  is  a  golden  morning  of  the  spring, 

My  cheek  is  pale,  and  hers  is  warm  with  bloom. 
And  we  are  left  in  that  old  cavern  room 

And  she  begins  to  sing. 

The  open  casement  quivers  in  the  breeze, 

And  one  large  musk-rose  leans  its  dewy  grace 
Into  the  chamber  like  a  happy  face. 

And  round  it  swim  the  bees. 


24  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

I  know  not  what  I  said ; — what  she  replied 
Lives,  like  eternal  sunshine,  in  my  heart ; 
And  then  I  murmured,  Oh !  we  never  part. 

My  love,  my  life,  my  bride ! 

And  silence  o'er  us,  after  that  great  bliss. 
Fell  like  a  welcome  shadow ;  and  I  heard 
The  far  woods  sighing,  and  a  summer  bird 

Singing  amid  the  trees. 

The  sweet  bird's  happy  song  that  streamed  around, 
The  murmur  of  the  woods,  the  azure  skies, 
Were  graven  on  my  heart,  though  ears  and  eyes 

Marked  neither  sight  nor  sound. 

She  sleeps  in  peace  beneath  the  chancel  stone. 
But  ah  I  so  clearly  is  the  vision  seen. 
The  dead  seem  raised,  or  Death  has  never  been. 

Were  I  not  here  alone. 

This  is  great  art  in  its  power  of  picturing  a  memory  of 
the  heart.  Let  us  notice  some  of  the  beauties.  The  lover 
is  pale  because  he  is  afraid,  anxious;  he  is  going  to  ask  a 
question  and  he  does  not  know  how  she  may  answer  him. 
All  this  was  long  ago,  years  and  years  ago,  but  the  strong 
emotions  of  that  morning  leave  their  every  detail  painted 
in  remembrance,  with  strange  vividness.  After  all  those 
years  the  man  still  recollects  the  appearance  of  the  room, 
the  sunshine  entering,  and  the  crimson  rose  looking  into 
the  room  from  the  garden,  with  bees  humming  round  it. 
Then  after  the  question  had  been  asked  and  happily 
answered,  neither  could  speak  for  joy;  and  because  of  the 
silence  all  the  sounds  of  nature  outside  became  almost  pain- 
fully distinct.  Now  he  remembers  how  he  heard  in  that 
room  the  sound  of  the  wind  in  far  away  trees,  the  singing 
of  a  bird — he  also  remembers  all  the  colours  and  the  lights 
of  the  day.  But  it  was  very,  very  long  ago,  and  she  is  dead. 
Still,  the  memory  is  so  clear  and  bright  in  his  heart  that  it 
is  as  if  time  had  stood  still,  or  as  if  she  had  come  back  from 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  25 

the  grave.     Only  one  thing  assures  him  that  it  is  but  a 
memory — he  is  alone. 

Returning  now  to  the  subject  of  love's  illusion  in  itself, 
let  me  remind  you  that  the  illusion  does  not  always  pass 
away — not  at  all.  It  passes  away  in  every  case  of  happy 
union,  when  it  has  become  no  longer  necessary  to  the  great 
purposes  of  nature.  But  in  case  of  disappointment,  loss, 
failure  to  win  the  maiden  desired,  it  often  happens  that  the 
ideal  image  never  fades  away,  but  persistently  haunts  the 
mind  through  life,  and  is  capable  thus  of  making  even  the 
most  successful  life  unhappy.  Sometimes  the  result  of  such 
disappointment  may  be  to  change  all  a  man's  ideas  about 
the  world,  about  life,  about  religion;  and  everything  remains 
darkened  for  him.  Many  a  young  person  disappointed  in 
love  begins  to  lose  religious  feeling  from  that  moment,  for 
it  seems  to  him,  simply  because  he  happens  to  be  unfortu- 
nate, that  the  universe  is  all  wrong.  On  the  other  hand 
the  successful  lover  thinks  that  the  universe  is  all  right;  he 
utters  his  thanks  to  the  gods,  and  feels  his  faith  in  religion 
and  human  nature  greater  than  before.  I  do  not  at  this 
moment  remember  any  striking  English  poem  illustrating 
this  fact;  but  there  is  a  pretty  little  poem  in  French  by 
Victor  Hugo  showing  well  the  relation  between  successful 
love  and  religious  feeling  in  simple  minds.  Here  is  an 
English  translation  of  it.  The  subject  is  simply  a  walk 
at  night,  the  girl-bride  leaning  upon  the  arm  of  her  husband; 
and  his  memory  of  the  evening  is  thus  expressed: 

The  trembling  arm  I  pressed 
Fondly ;  our  thoughts  confessed 

Love's  conquest  tender ; 
God  filled  the  vast  sweet  night, 
Love  filled  our  hearts ;  the  light 

Of  stars  made  splendour. 

Even  as  we  walked  and  dreamed, 
'Twixt  heaven  and  earth,  it  seemed 


26  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

Our  souls  were  speaking; 
The  stars  looked  on  thy  face ; 
Thine  eyes  through  violet  space 

The  stars  were  seeking. 

And  from  the  astral  light 
Feeling  the  soft  sweet  night 

Thrill  to  thy  soul, 
Thou  saidst:     "O  God  of  Bliss 
Lord  of  the  Blue  Abyss, 

Thou  madest  the  whole !" 

And  the  stars  whispered  low 
To  the  God  of  Space,  "We  know, 

God  of  Eternity, 
Dear  Lord,  all  Love  is  Thine, 
Even  by  Love's  Light  we  shine! 

Thou  madest  Beauty !" 

Of  course  here  the  religious  feeling  itself  is  part  of  the 
illusion,  but  it  serves  to  give  great  depth  and  beauty  to 
simple  feeling.  Besides,  the  poem  illustrates  one  truth  very 
forcibly — namely,  that  when  we  are  perfectly  happy  all  the 
universe  appears  to  be  divine  and  divinely  beautiful;  in 
other  words,  we  are  in  heaven.  On  the  contrary,  when  we 
are  very  unhappy  the  universe  appears  to  be  a  kind  of  hell, 
in  which  there  is  no  hope,  no  joy,  and  no  gods  to  pray  to. 

But  the  special  reason  I  wished  to  call  attention  to 
Victor  Hugo's  lyric  is  that  it  has  that  particular  quality 
called  by  philosophical  critics  "cosmic  emotion."  Cosmic 
em.otion  means  the  highest  quality  of  human  emotion. 
The  word  "cosmos"  signifies  the  universe — not  simply  this 
world,  but  all  the  hundred  millions  of  suns  and  worlds  in 
the  known  heaven.  And  the  adjective  "cosmic,"  means, 
of  course,  "related  to  the  whole  universe."  Ordinary 
emotion  may  be  more  than  individual  in  its  relations.  I 
mean  that  your  feelings  may  be  moved  by  the  thought  or 
the  perception  of  something  relating  not  only  to  your  own 
life  but  also  to  the  lives  of  many  others.     The  largest  form 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  rt 

of  such  ordinary  emotion  is  what  would  be  called  national 
feeling,  the  feeling  of  your  own  relation  to  the  whole  nation 
or  the  whole  race.  But  there  is  higher  emotion  even  than 
that.  When  you  think  of  yourself  emotionally  not  only  in 
relation  to  your  own  country,  your  own  nation,  but  in  rela- 
tion to  all  humanity,  then  you  have  a  cosmic  emotion  of 
the  third  or  second  order.  I  say  "third  or  second,"  because 
whether  the  emotion  be  second  or  third  rate  depends  very 
much  upon  your  conception  of  humanity  as  One.  But  if 
you  think  of  yourself  in  relation  not  to  this  world  only  but 
to  the  whole  universe  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  stars  and 
planets — in  relation  to  the  whole  mystery  of  existence — 
then  you  have  a  cosmic  emotion  of  the  highest  order.  Of 
course  there  are  degrees  even  in  this;  the  philosopher  or  the 
metaphysician  will  probably  have  a  finer  quality  of  cosmic 
emotion  than  the  poet  or  the  artist  is  able  to  have.  But 
lovers  very  often,  according  to  their  degree  of  intellectual 
culture,  experience  a  kind  of  cosmic  emotion;  and  Victor 
Hugo's  little  poem  illustrates  this.  Night  and  the  stars 
and  the  abyss  of  the  sky  all  seem  to  be  thrilling  with  love 
and  beauty  to  the  lover's  eyes,  because  he  himself  is  in  a 
state  of  loving  happiness ;  and  then  he  begins  to  think  about 
his  relation  to  the  universal  life,  to  the  supreme  mystery 
beyond  all  Form  and  Name. 

A  third  or  fourth  class  of  such  emotion  may  be  illustrated 
by  the  beautiful  sonnet  of  Keats,  written  not  long  before 
his  death.  Only  a  very  young  man  could  have  written 
this,  because  only  a  very  young  man  loves  in  this  way — but 
how  delightful  it  is  I     It  has  no  title. 

Bright  star !  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art — 

Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night 
And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart, 

Like  nature's  patient,  sleepless  Eremite, 
The  moving  waters  at  their  priest-like  task 

Of  pure  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores, 
Or  gazing  on  new  soft-fallen  mask 

Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors — 


28  ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY 

No — yet  still  steadfast,  still  unchangeable, 
Pillow'd  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast. 

To  feel  forever  its  soft  fall  and  swell. 
Awake  forever  in  a  sweet  unrest, 

Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender-taken  breath. 

And  so  live  ever — or  else  swoon  to  death. 

Tennyson  has  charmingly  represented  a  lover  wishing 
that  he  were  a  necklace  of  his  beloved,  or  her  girdle,  or  her 
earring;  but  that  is  not  a  cosmic  emotion  at  all.  Indeed, 
the  idea  of  Tennyson's  pretty  song  was  taken  from  old 
French  and  English  love  songs  of  the  peasants — popular 
ballads.  But  in  this  beautiful  sonnet  of  Keats,  where  the 
lover  wishes  to  be  endowed  with  the  immortality  and  like- 
ness of  a  star  only  to  be  forever  with  the  beloved,  there  is 
something  of  the  old  Greek  thought  which  inspired  the 
beautiful  lines  written  between  two  and  three  thousand 
years  ago,  and  translated  by  J.  A.  Symonds: 

Gazing  on  stars,  my  Star !     Would  that  I  were  the  welkin, 
Starry  with  myriad  eyes,  ever  to  gaze  upon  thee  I 

But  there  is  more  than  the  Greek  beauty  of  thought  in 
Keats's  sonnet,  for  we  find  the  poet  speaking  of  the  exterior 
universe  in  the  largest  relation,  thinking  of  the  stars  watch- 
ing forever  the  rising  and  the  falling  of  the  sea  tides,  think- 
ing of  the  sea  tides  themselves  as  continually  purifying 
the  world,  even  as  a  priest  purifies  a  temple.  The  fancy 
of  the  boy  expands  to  the  fancy  of  philosophy;  it  is  a  blend- 
ing of  poetry,  philosophy,  and  sincere  emotion. 

You  will  have  seen  by  the  examples  which  we  have  been 
reading  together  that  English  love  poetry,  like  Japanese  love 
poetry,  may  be  divided  into  many  branches  and  classified 
according  to  the  range  of  subject  from  the  very  simplest 
utterance  of  feeling  up  to  that  highest  class  expressing 
cosmic  emotion.  Very  rich  the  subject  is;  the  student  is 
only  puzzled  where  to  choose.  I  should  again  suggest  to 
you  to  observe  the  value  of  the  theme  of  illusion,  especially 


ON  LOVE  IN  ENGLISH  POETRY  29 

as  illustrated  in  our  examples.  There  are  indeed  multi- 
tudes of  Western  love  poems  that  would  probably  appear 
to  you  very  strange,  perhaps  very  foolish.  But  you  will 
certainly  acknowledge  that  there  are  some  varieties  of  Eng- 
lish love  poetry  which  are  neither  strange  nor  foolish,  and 
which  are  well  worth  studying,  not  only  in  themselves  but 
in  their  relation  to  the  higher  forms  of  emotional  expression 
in  all  literature.  Out  of  love  poetry  belonging  to  the 
highest  class,  much  can  be  drawn  that  would  serve  to  enrich 
and  to  give  a  new  colour  to  your  own  literature  of  emotion. 


CHAPTER  II 
STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON 

(A  Fragment) 

With  perhaps  one  exception,  the  great  poets  of  the  Victo- 
rian period  only  carried  on  and  developed  the  traditions  of 
the  preceding  era.  This  is  curious.  The  poets  of  the  Lake 
School  and  of  the  other  schools  who  were  contemporary 
with  it  have  their  counterparts  in  the  men  of  the  Victorian 
age.  Tennyson  is  Keats  perfected  and  enriched.  Words- 
worth is  represented  also  partly  by  Tennyson,  but  much 
more  by  Matthew  Arnold,  both  as  to  his  faults  and  as  to 
his  merits.  Coleridge  reblossoms  in  Rossetti.  Shelley  and 
Byron  both  reappear  in  Swinburne,  but  without  any  of  the 
faults  of  the  Satanic  School  as  to  form,  Swinburne  being 
the  greatest  master  of  form  in  all  modern  literature.  But 
the  Satanic  spirit  of  Byron  is  there — larger,  stronger,  fiercer, 
and  all  the  grace  and  passion  and  music  of  Shelley,  magni- 
fied miraculously,  with  a  new  and  strange  quality  of  beauty 
borrowed  from  former  times.  Even  Sir  Walter  Scott  is 
reborn  in  the  poetry  of  William  Morris,  who  inherited  the 
same  extraordinary  faculty  for  romance  in  verse,  though  he 
falls  far  below  Scott  as  a  lyrical  poet.  There  is  only  one 
great  figure  of  the  Victorian  era  for  whom  we  cannot  find 
any  prototype;  that  is  Robert  Browning.  Browning  alone 
belongs  to  no  school,  and  makes  a  tradition  of  his  own,  the 
future  of  which  is  very  doubtful.  It  might  be  said  that 
Tennyson  is  not  a  fair  representative  of  the  philosophical 
tradition  of  Wordsworth,  and  that  Matthew  Arnold  does 
not  go  much  beyond  Wordsworth  in  range  of  thought. 
This  is  true.  I  think  that  the  man  who  most  expanded  the 
Wordsworthian  tradition  and  brought  it  into  perfect  har- 

30 


STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON  31 

mony  with  nineteenth  century  philosophy,  is  George  Mere- 
dith, whose  faults  of  style  alone  prevent  him  from  taking 
place  in  the  very  front  rank.  As  a  philosopher  I  hold  him 
to  be  the  largest  thinker  of  the  century, 

Alfred  Tennyson  is  the  first  figure  that  rises  up  before 
us — the  first  great  star  that  showed  itself  in  the  poetical  sky 
after  the  sinking  of  those  two  constellations  of  which 
Wordsworth  and  Shelley  were  respectively  the  principal 
luminaries.  The  serious  and  self-controlled  character  ex- 
pressed in  his  familiar  portraits  appears  to  have  dis- 
tinguished him  even  in  childhood.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
curious  that  as  a  boy  he  absolutely  worshipped  Byron,  and 
afterwards  thought  that  the  death  of  Byron  was  the  greatest 
possible  misfortune  that  could  have  happened  to  the  human 
race.  Even  as  a  child  he  composed  somewhat,  but  none  of 
his  very  youthful  poems  was  suffered  to  see  the  light.  As 
he  grew  older,  Wordsworth  began  to  influence  him  consid- 
erably, together  with  Scott  and  Coleridge.  Then  it  appears 
that  he  had  an  enthusiasm  for  Shelley.  But  by  the  time 
that  he  had  reached  maturity,  his  great  source  of  inspiration 
became  Keats;  and  it  is  the  tradition  of  Keats  that  he 
chiefly  followed. 

Considering  the  extraordinary  perfection  of  his  work  as 
we  now  have  it,  you  might  find  it  difficult  to  believe  that 
the  first  work  which  he  published  was  bad — weak,  senti- 
mental, gushing — somewhat  in  the  style  of  Mrs.  Hemans 
and  the  lady-poets  before  the  Victorian  period.  There 
were  beauties  in  it;  but  it  was  deserving  of  severe  criticism, 
and  it  was  criticised  very  severely  indeed.  Previously,  in 
1826,  Tennyson  had  been  in  print;  he  and  his  brothers, 
Charles  and  Frederick,  had  published  a  little  volume  en- 
titled "Poems  by  Two  Brothers."  We  do  not  know  now 
why  it  was  so  called,  but  we  do  know  that  three  and  not 
two  persons  composed  it.  But  this  anonymous  publication 
cannot  be  said  to  have  much  connection  with  Alfred's  career. 
The  first  book  that  he  published  bearing  his  own  name  was 


32  STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON 

a  volume  simply  entitled  "Poems,"  printed  in  1830.  This 
was  the  book  that  deserved  severe  criticism,  and  received  it. 
The  criticism  was  very  beneficial  to  Tennyson,  probably 
because  of  his  extremely  strong  character.  Instead  of  being 
downcast  by  it,  he  set  to  work  to  correct  his  faults,  quietly, 
slowly,  patiently,  and  twelve  years  later  he  printed  a  second 
volume  of  poems,  containing,  besides  much  new  matter,  the 
best  of  the  bad  poems  of  1830  entirely  changed,  trans- 
formed, and  beautified.  This  time  he  was  not  severely 
criticised;  men  of  letters  saw  that  a  very  great  poet  was 
coming.  Five  years  later  appeared  "The  Princess."  Then 
Tennyson's  reputation  suddenly  blazed  up  and  he  becarne 
famous;  no  such  poetry  had  ever  been  read  in  England 
before.  Then  in  rapid  succession  followed  "In  Memo- 
riam,"  "Maud,"  and  the  first  half  of  the  "Idylls  of  the 
King" — these  last  appearing  in  1859.  Tennyson  mean- 
time had  become  poet  laureate  after  the  death  of  Words- 
worth; and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  honour  greatly 
increased  his  popularity.  When  "Enoch  Arden"  was  pub- 
lished, in  1864,  seventeen  thousand  copies  were  sold  on  the 
morning  of  publication.  Thenceforth  the  poet's  fortune 
was  in  every  way  secure.  He  rose  from  honour  to  honour; 
he  was  made  a  peer;  he  became  as  rich  as  he  could  possibly 
have  wished;  and  he  continued  the  dominant  figure  in  Eng- 
lish literature  during  the  latter  half  of  the  century.  Even 
to-day  we  must  confess  that,  in  a  general  way,  the  greatest 
literary  figure  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  Tennyson,  He 
died  in  1892,  and  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey  with 
extraordinary  honours,  his  death  being  considered  as  a 
national  calamity. 

No  other  English  poet,  except  perhaps  Pope,  has  ever 
given  so  many  familiar  quotations  to  the  English  language ; 
and  nobody  else,  certainly  not  Pope,  has  influenced  and 
enriched  the  English  language  so  much  as  Tennyson. 
Probably  his  influence  will  be  felt  for  hundreds  of  years  to 
come.     In  spite  of  the  predictions  of  Matthew  Arnold  and 


STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON  33 

others,  that  influence  is  growing.  And  it  is  an  influence 
not  only  artistic  and  philosophical,  but  also  educational  and 
moral  in  the  highest  degree.  The  whole  English  world 
from  Great  Britain  to  India,  from  Canada  in  the  North 
down  to  South  Africa  and  Australia  in  the  other  hemisphere, 
studies  Tennyson,  and  will  long  continue  to  study  him. 
Let  us  now  try  to  understand  the  reason  of  this  great  influ- 
ence and  this  extraordinary  recognition  of  an  excellence  as 
exquisite  as  it  is  rare. 

The  first  fact  to  bear  in  mind  about  the  character  of 
Tennyson's  work  as  individual  labour  is  this,  that  no  other 
man  in  our  literary  history,  not  even  Pope,  ever  polished  his 
work  so  much.  He  was  not  simply  satisfied  with  keeping 
work  back  for  years  rather  than  print  it  before  feeling  quite 
sure  that  he  had  done  his  best  upon  it;  but  he  subsequently 
corrected  it  in  almost  every  one  of  the  many  editions  which 
it  afterwards  went  through.  For,  as  a  man  grows  older, 
his  capacity  for  literary  judgment,  his  faculty  of  literary 
perception,  and  the  range  of  his  knowledge,  are  all  con- 
stantly increasing  in  breadth  and  depth;  and  Tennyson, 
recognising  this  fact,  has  given  to  even  the  work  of  his  early 
years  the  most  highly  developed  powers  of  his  old  age.  In 
critical  editions  of  poets,  it  is  necessary  that  all  different 
versions  of  each  poem  be  presented  to  the  student;  and  it 
has  been  well  said  that  if  such  an  edition  of  Tennyson 
should  ever  be  published  it  must  be  the  most  enormous  pro- 
duction of  its  kind  in  existence. 

As  a  result  of  this  perpetual  polishing,  the  work  of  Ten- 
nyson has  an  exquisiteness  not  to  be  surpassed  in  any  lit- 
erature. Of  no  other  poet  can  it  be  said  that  the  exquisite- 
ness is  so  uniform.  You  cannot  find  in  the  whole  immense 
body  of  this  man's  verse  inequalities  of  construction.  You 
may  find  inequalities  of  other  kinds,  but  not  of  workman- 
ship. And  were  there  no  other  merit  in  Tennyson  at  all, 
this  single  merit  would  still  give  him  the  first  place  as  a 
wordsmith. 


34  STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON 

But  there  are  many  other  qualities  in  Tennyson,  some  of 
which  are  even  greater  than  merits  of  workmanship. 
There  is  thought,  singularly  broad  and  liberal,  with  just  a 
little  of  that  English  conservatism  which  we  may  not  be 
able  to  sympathise  with,  but  which  we  are  obliged  to  con- 
fess healthy  and  dignified.  Then  there  is  the  splendid 
sense  of  sound  and  colour.  There  is  fine  observation  of 
nature,  and  fine  observation  of  human  character.  And  all 
these  abilities  were  directed  especially  toward  the  painting 
of  English  subjects  as  a  rule — English  life,  English  land- 
scape, English  women,  English  ideals  of  heroism  and  of 
duty.  Tennyson  seldom  ventures  into  classical  or  ancient 
themes,  though  when  he  does,  as  in  "Lucretius,"  "Ulysses," 
"Tithonus,"  or  the  translations  from  Homer,  he  is  still  peer- 
less within  the  limits  which  he  has  set  himself.  Even  in 
the  Idylls,  and  other  studies  of  which  the  subject  is  medi- 
seval,  it  is  always  English  life  and  English  character  that  are 
described  under  a  thin  disguise.  The  knights  of  Arthur's 
court  are  not  really  the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages;  they  are 
ideals  of  English  gentlemen,  and  have  long  been  so  recog- 
nised by  the  people.  The  Princess  and  her  girl-students 
and  her  lady  professor  and  all  the  figures  of  that  wonderful 
medley  are  figures  familiar  to  every  English  reader;  they 
are  nineteenth  century  people  wearing  the  robes  of  other 
days;  they  are  actors  and  actresses  acting  out  a  lesson  both 
didactic  and  eesthetic.  How  should  the  English  people  not 
love  work  that  painted  them  in  such  splendid  colours'? 

This  would  alone  explain  popularity.  Besides  the  pleas- 
ure found  in  the  subject,  and  in  the  artistic  treatment  of 
the  subject,  there  is  yet  another  quality  to  ensure  popu- 
larity— the  quality  of  clearness.  Great  scholar  though  he 
was,  Tennyson  could  be  understood  by  any  person  with  a 
moderate  degree  of  education.  It  is  true  that  some  of  his 
thoughts  could  be  read  at  once  only  by  a  philosopher,  but 
the  proportion  of  these  to  the  rest  of  the  text  is  rather  small ; 
and  we  may  generally  say  that  even  where  Tennyson's  sen- 


STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON  35 

tences  seem  at  first  sight  most  difficult,  a  little  patient  think- 
ing and  study  can  always  straighten  out  the  difficulty.  I 
am  speaking  of  course  of  English  readers.  When  we  study 
Tennyson  in  Japan  we  have  to  explain  almost  every  line  of 
certain  poems.  But  that  is  because  those  poems  are  full 
of  English  idioms  and  English  allusions  which,  though  fa- 
miliar to  the  English  reader  from  local  habit  and  experi- 
ence, are  necessarily  very  obscure  for  one  who  reads  in  a 
language  not  his  own. 

And  there  is  yet  another  curious  quality  in  Tennyson's 
compositions — a  teaching  quality.  He  has  brought  back 
to  the  English  language,  out  of  the  cemetery  of  dead  words, 
a  great  many  expressions  from  Middle  English  and  other 
obsolete  English,  and  given  them  new  life;  and  he  has  done 
this  in  such  a  way  that  the  reader  is  taught  the  meaning  of 
these  unfamiliar  words  without  looking  at  the  dictionary. 
The  context  teaches  the  value  of  the  words  better  than  any 
dictionary  could  teach  it  to  you.  I  may  say  that  I  myself, 
as  a  boy,  learned  more  English  from  Tennyson  than  I  learned 
in  any  other  way;  and  even  now  I  cannot  read  him  over 
again  without  constantly  learning  something  new.  The 
more  you  study  him,  the  more  you  will  find  in  him ;  and  the 
more  you  will  be  astonished  at  the  perception  of  the  labour 
and  the  learning  that  such  work  must  have  cost.  I  con- 
sider Tennyson  the  greatest  educational  influence  in  Eng- 
lish literature;  and  the  etymologists,  now  engaged  upon  the 
colossal  dictionary  of  the  English  language,  would  prob- 
ably be  the  first  to  recognise  Tennyson's  influence  upon  that 
language.  No  small  portion  of  the  three  millions  of  quo- 
tations that  are  to  appear  in  that  dictionary  will  be  quota- 
tions from  Tennyson. 

Some  of  you  may  have  read  Taine's  criticism  upon 
Tennyson;  and  I  wish  to  say  a  word  about  that.  Taine, 
who  was  a  very  great  critic,  one  of  the  greatest  artists  that 
literature  ever  produced,  made  a  very  unfavourable  com- 
parison of  Tennyson  with  Alfred  de  Musset.     From  Taine's 


36  STUDIES  IN  TENNYSON 

point  of  view,  I  venture  to  assure  you,  Taine  is  quite  right. 
He  explains  his  partiality  perfectly  well.  He  found  Ten- 
nyson too  correct,  too  genteel,  too  conservative,  too  cold, 
and  altogether  too  English.  Tennyson  was  not,  in  his 
judgment,  a  world-poet — that  is,  a  poet  who  can  touch 
equally  well  the  hearts  of  the  men  in  all  languages,  a  poet 
who  sings  only  of  emotions  common  to  all  mankind.  But 
de  Musset  is  a  poet  of  passion;  and  passion  is  universal. 
True,  there  is  not  much  passion  in  Tennyson.  True,  also, 
Tennyson  is  not  really  a  world-poet.  But  as  an  English 
poet,  as  a  master  of  all  the  beauties  and  riches  and  powers 
of  the  English  language,  he  is  unique.  And  for  the  study 
of  language,  rather  than  for  the  study  of  emotion,  there  is 
no  one  like  him.  Upon  this  point,  which  Taine  did  not 
sufficiently  recognise,  it  is  necessary  that  you  should  think 
clearly. 


CHAPTER  III 
STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 


We  must  rank  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  as  not  inferior  to 
Tennyson  in  workmanship — therefore  as  occupying  the 
very  first  rank  in  nineteenth  century  poetry.  He  was  not 
inferior  to  Tennyson  either  as  a  thinker,  but  his  thinking 
was  in  totally  different  directions.  He  had  no  sympathy 
with  the  ideas  of  his  own  century;  he  lived  and  thought  in 
the  Middle  Ages;  and  while  one  of  our  very  greatest  Eng- 
lish poets,  he  takes  a  place  apart,  for  he  does  not  reflect  the 
century  at  all.  He  had  the  dramatic  gift,  but  it  was  a  gift 
in  his  case  much  more  limited  than  that  of  Browning.  Al- 
together we  can  safely  give  him  a  place  in  the  first  rank  as 
a  maker  of  poetry,  but  in  all  other  respects  we  cannot 
classify  him  in  any  way.  He  remains  a  unique  figure  in 
the  Victorian  age,  a  figure  such  as  may  not  reappear  for 
hundreds  of  years  to  come.  It  was  as  if  a  man  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  had  been  reborn  into  the  nineteenth  century, 
and,  in  spite  of  modern  culture,  had  continued  to  think  and 
to  feel  very  much  as  men  felt  and  thought  in  the  time  of 
the  great  Italian  poet  Dante. 

One  reason  for  this  extraordinary  difference  between  him- 
self and  his  contemporaries  was  that  Rossetti  was  not  an 
Englishman  but  an  Italian  by  blood,  religion,  and  feeling. 
In  his  verse  we  might  expect  to  find  something  that  we  can- 
not find  in  any  other  English  poet;  and  I  think  that  we 
shall  find  it.  The  facts  of  his  life — strange  and  pathetic — 
need  not  occupy  us  now.  You  need  only  remember  for  the 
present  that  he  was  a  great  painter  before  becoming  a  great 

poet,  and  that  his  painting,  like  his  poetry,  was  the  painting 

37 


38  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

of  another  century  than  his  own.  Also  it  will  be  well  to 
bear  in  mind  that  he  detested  modern  science  and  modern 
philosophy — which  fact  maizes  it  all  the  more  remarkable 
that  he  uttered  some  great  thoughts  quite  in  harmony  with 
the  most  profound  philosophy  of  the  Orient. 

In  studying  the  best  of  his  poetry,  it  will  be  well  for  us 
to  consider  it  by  groups,  taking  a  few  specimens  from  each 
group  as  examples  of  the  rest;  since  we  shall  not  have  time 
to  read  even  a  quarter  of  all  his  production.  Taking  the 
very  simplest  of  his  work  to  begin  with,  I  shall  make  a  se- 
lection from  what  I  might  call  the  symbolic  group,  for  want 
of  a  better  name.  I  mean  those  poems  which  are  parables, 
or  symbolic  illustrations  of  deep  truths — poems  which  seem 
childishly  simple,  but  are  nevertheless  very  deep  indeed. 
We  may  begin  with  a  little  piece  called  "The  Mirror." 

She  knew  It  not, — most  perfect  pain 

To  learn :  this  too  she  knew  not.     Strife 
For  me,  calm  hers,  as  from  the  first. 
'Twas  but  another  bubble  burst 
Upon  the  curdling  draught  of  life, — 
My  silent  patience  mine  again. 

As  who,  of  forms  that  crowd  unknown 
Within  a  distant  mirror's  shade, 

Deems  such  a  one  himself,  and  makes 
Some  sign ;  but  when  the  image  shakes 
No  whit,  he  finds  his  thought  betray'd, 
And  must  seek  elsewhere  for  his  own. 

So  far  as  the  English  goes,  this  verse  is  plain  enough; 
but  unless  you  have  met  with  the  same  idea  in  some  other 
English  writer,  you  will  find  the  meaning  very  obscure. 
The  poet  is  speaking  of  a  universal,  or  almost  universal,  ex- 
perience of  misplaced  love.  A  man  becomes  passionately 
attached  to  a  woman,  who  treats  him  with  cold  indifference. 
Finally  the  lover  finds  out  his  mistake;  the  woman  that  he 
loved  proves  not  to  be  what  he  imagined;  she  is  not  worthy 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  S9 

of  his  love.  Then  what  was  he  in  love  with?  With  a 
shadow  out  of  his  brain,  with  an  imagination  or  ideal  very 
pure  and  noble,  but  only  an  imagination.  Supposing  that 
he  was  worshipping  good  qualities  in  a  noble  woman,  he 
deceived  himself;  the  woman  had  no  such  qualities;  they 
existed  only  in  his  fancy.  Thus  he  calls  her  his  mirror, 
the  human  being  that  seemed  to  be  a  reflection  of  all  that 
was  good  in  his  own  heart.  She  never  knows  the  truth  as 
to  why  the  man  loved  her  and  then  ceased  to  love  her;  he 
could  not  tell  her,  because  it  would  have  been  to  her  "most 
perfect  pain  to  learn," 

A  less  obscure  but  equally  beautiful  symbolism,  in  an- 
other metre,  is  "The  Hone5^suckle." 

I  plucked  a  honeysuckle  where 

The  hedge  on  high  is  quick  with  thorn, 
And  climbing  for  the  prize,  was  torn, 

And  fouled  my  feet  in  quag-water ; 
And  by  the  thorns  and  by  the  wind 
The  blossom  that  I  took  was  thinn'd, 

And  yet  I  found  it  sweet  and  fair. 

Thence  to  a  richer  growth  I  came, 
Where,  nursed  in  mellow  intercourse, 
The  honeysuckle  sprang  by  scores, 

Not  harried  like  my  single  stem, 
All  virgin  lamps  of  scent  and  dew, 
So  from  my  hand  that  first  I  threw. 

Yet  plucked  not  any  more  of  them. 

It  often  happens  that  a  young  man  during  his  first  strug- 
gle in  life,  when  all  the  world  seems  to  be  against  him, 
meets  with  some  poor  girl  who  loves  him.  She  is  not  edu- 
cated as  he  has  been;  she  is  ignorant  of  many  things,  and 
she  has  suffered  herself  a  great  deal  of  hardship,  so  that 
although  beautiful  naturally  and  good-hearted,  both  her 
beauty  and  her  temper  have  been  a  little  spoiled  by  the 
troubles  of  life.  The  young  man  whom  she  loves  is  obliged 
to  mix  with  a  very  poor  and  vulgar  class  of  people  in  order 


40  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

to  become  intimate  with  her.  There  are  plenty  of  rough 
common  men  who  would  like  to  get  that  girl ;  and  the  young 
man  has  a  good  deal  of  trouble  in  winning  her  away  from 
them.  With  all  her  small  faults  she  seems  for  the  time 
very  beautiful  to  her  lover,  because  he  cannot  get  any  finer 
woman  while  he  remains  poor.  But  presently  success 
comes  to  him,  and  he  is  able  to  enter  a  much  higher  class 
of  society,  where  he  finds  scores  of  beautiful  girls,  much 
more  accomplished  than  his  poor  sweetheart;  and  he  be- 
comes ashamed  of  her  and  cruelly  abandons  her.  But  he 
does  not  marry  any  of  the  rich  and  beautiful  women.  Per- 
haps he  is  tired  of  women;  perhaps  his  heart  has  been 
spoiled.  The  poet  does  not  tell  us  why.  He  simply  tells 
a  story  of  human  ingratitude  which  is  as  old  as  the  world. 
One  more  simple  poem  before  we  take  up  the  larger  and 
more  complicated  pieces  of  the  group. 

THE  WOODSPURGE 

The  wind  flapped  loose,  the  wind  was  still, 
Shaken  out  dead  from  tree  and  hill : 
I  had  walked  on  at  the  wind's  will, — 
I  sat  now,  for  the  wind  was  still. 

Between  my  knees  my  forehead  was, — 
My  lips,  drawn  in,  said  not  Alas ! 
My  hair  was  over  in  the  grass, 
My  naked  ears  heard  the  day  pass. 

My  eyes,  wide  open,  had  the  run 

Of  some  ten  weeds  to  fix  upon ; 

Among  those  few,  out  of  the  sun, 

The  woodspurge  flower'd,  three  cups  in  one. 

From  perfect  grief  there  need  not  be 
Wisdom  or  even  memory : 
One  thing  then  learnt  remains  to  me, — 
The  woodspurge  has  a  cup  of  three ! 

The  phenomenon  here  described  by  the  poet  is  uncon- 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  41 

sciously  familiar  to  most  of  us.  Any  person  who  has  suf- 
fered some  very  great  pain,  moral  pain,  is  apt  to  observe 
during  that  instant  of  suffering  things  which  he  never  ob- 
served before,  or  to  notice  details  never  noticed  before  in 
common  things.  One  reason  is  that  at  such  a  time  sense- 
impressions  are  stimulated  to  a  strange  degree  by  the  in- 
crease of  circulation,  while  the  eyes  and  ears  remain  auto- 
matically active  only.  Whoever  among  you  can  remember 
the  pain  of  losing  a  parent  or  beloved  friend,  will  probably 
remember  with  extraordinary  vividness  all  kinds  of  little 
things  seen  or  heard  at  the  time,  such  as  the  cry  of  a  bird 
or  a  cricket,  the  sound  of  the  dripping  of  water,  the  form 
of  a  sunbeam  upon  a  wall,  the  shapes  of  shadows  in  a  gar- 
den. The  personage  of  this  poem  often  before  saw  the 
woodspurge,  without  noticing  anything  particular  about  it; 
but  in  a  moment  of  great  sorrow  observing  the  plant,  he 
learns  for  the  first  time  the  peculiar  form  of  its  flower.  In 
a  wonderful  novel  by  Henry  Kingsley,  called  "Ravenshoe," 
there  is  a  very  striking  example  of  the  same  thing.  A  cav- 
alry-soldier, waiting  in  the  saddle  for  the  order  to  charge 
the  enemy,  observes  on  the  back  of  the  soldier  before  him 
a  grease-spot  which  looks  exactly  like  the  map  of  Sweden, 
and  begins  to  think  that  if  the  outline  of  Norway  were  be- 
side it,  the  upper  part  of  the  map  would  go  over  the  shoulder 
of  the  man.  This  fancy  comes  to  him  in  a  moment  when 
he  believes  himself  going  to  certain  death. 

Now  we  will  take  a  longer  poem,  very  celebrated,  en- 
titled "The  Cloud  Confines." 

The  day  is  dark  and  the  night 

To  him  that  would  search  their  heart; 

No  lips  of  cloud  that  will  part 
Nor  morning  song  in  the  light: 

Only,  gazing  alone, 

To  him  wild  shadows  are  shown. 

Deep  under  deep  unknown, 
And  height  above  unknown  height. 


42  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Still  we  say  as  we  go, — 

"Strange  to  think  by  the  way, 

Whatever  there  is  to  know, 
That  shall  we  know  one  day." 

The  Past  is  over  and  fled ; 

Named  new,  we  name  it  the  old ; 

Thereof  some  tale  hath  been  told, 
But  no  word  comes  from  the  dead ; 

Whether  at  all  they  be, 

Or  whether  as  bond  or  free. 

Or  whether  they  too  were  we. 
Or  by  what  spell  they  have  sped. 

Still  we  say  as  we  go, — 

"Strange  to  think  by  the  way. 

Whatever  there  is  to  know, 
That  shall  we  know  one  day." 

What  of  the  heart  of  hate 

That  beats  in  thy  breast,  O  Time  ? — 
Red  strife  from  the  furthest  prime. 

And  anguish  of  fierce  debate; 
War  that  shatters  her  slain, 
And  peace  that  grinds  them  as  grain, 
And  eyes  fixed  ever  in  vain 

On  the  pitiless  eyes  of  Fate. 
Still  we  say  as  we  go, — 

"Strange  to  think  by  the  way. 
Whatever  there  is  to  know, 
That  shall  we  know  one  day." 

What  of  the  heart  of  love 

That  bleeds  in  thy  breast,  O  Man  ? — 
Thy  kisses  snatched  'neath  the  ban 

Of  fangs  that  mock  them  above ; 
Thy  bells  prolonged  unto  knells, 
Thy  hope  that  a  breath  dispels. 
Thy  bitter  forlorn  farewells 

And  the  empty  echoes  thereof? 
Still  we  say  as  we  go, — 

"Strange  to  think  by  the  way. 
Whatever  there  is  to  know. 
That  shall  we  know  one  day." 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  43 

The  sky  leans  dumb  on  the  sea, 

Aweary  with  all  its  wings ; 

And  oh !  the  song  the  sea  sings 
Is  dark  everlastingly. 

Our  past  is  clean  forgot, 

Our  present  is  and  is  not, 

Our  future's  a  sealed  seedplot, 
And  what  betwixt  them  are  we  ? 

Still  we  say  as  we  go, — 

"Strange  to  think  by  the  way, 

Whatever  there  is  to  know, 

That  shall  we  know  one  day." 

This  dark  poetry  is  very  different  from  the  optimism  of 
Tennyson;  and  we  uncomfortably  feel  it  to  be  much  more 
true.  In  spite  of  all  its  wonderful  tenderness  and  caressing 
hopefulness,  we  feel  that  Tennyson's  poetry  does  not  illumi- 
nate the  sombre  problems  of  life.  But  Rossetti  will  not  be 
found  to  be  a  pessimist.  I  shall  presently  show,  by  exam- 
ples, the  difference  between  poetical  pessimism  and  Ros- 
setti's  thoughtful  melancholy.  He  is  simply  communing 
with  us  about  the  mystery  of  the  universe — sadly  enough, 
but  always  truthfully.  We  may  even  suspect  a  slight 
mockery  in  the  burthen  of  his  poem : 

Whatever  there  is  to  know, 
That  shall  we  know  one  day. 

Suppose  there  is  nothing  to  know*?  "Very  well,"  the  poet 
would  answer,  "then  we  shall  know  nothing."  Although 
by  education  and  by  ancestry  a  Roman  Catholic,  Rossetti 
seems  to  have  had  just  as  little  faith  as  any  of  his  great 
contemporaries;  the  artistic  and  emotional  side  of  Catholi- 
cism made  strong  appeal  to  his  nature  as  an  artist,  but  so  far 
as  personal  belief  is  concerned  we  may  judge  him  by  his 
own  lines : 

Would  God  I  knew  there  were  a  God  to  thank 
When  thanks  arise  in  me ! 


44  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Nevertheless  we  have  here  no  preacher  of  negation,  but  a 
sincere  doubter.  We  know  nothing  of  the  secret  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  meaning  of  its  joy  and  pain  and  impermanency ; 
we  do  not  know  anything  of  the  dead;  we  do  not  know  the 
meaning  of  time  or  space  or  life.  But  just  for  that  reason 
there  may  be  marvellous  things  to  know.  The  dead  do  not 
come  back,  but  we  do  not  know  whether  they  could  come 
back,  nor  even  the  real  meaning  of  death.  Do  we  even 
know,  he  asks,  whether  the  dead  were  not  ourselves  *?  This 
thought,  like  the  thought  in  the  poem  "Sudden  Light,"  is 
peculiar  to  Rossetti.  You  will  find  nothing  of  this  thought 
in  any  other  Victorian  poet  of  great  rank — except,  indeed, 
in  some  of  the  work  of  O'Shaughnessy,  who  is  now  coming 
into  a  place  of  eminence  only  second  to  that  of  the  four 
great  masters. 

Besides  this  remarkable  line,  which  I  have  asked  you  to 
put  in  italics,  you  should  remember  those  two  very  splendid 
lines  in  the  third  stanza: 

War  that  shatters  her  slain, 

And  peace  that  grinds  them  as  grain. 

These  have  become  famous.  The  suggestion  is  that  peace 
is  more  cruel  than  war.  In  battle  a  man  is  dashed  to  pieces, 
and  his  pain  is  immediately  over.  In  the  competition  of 
civil  life,  the  weak  and  the  stupid,  no  matter  how  good  or 
moral  they  may  be,  are  practically  crushed  by  the  machinery 
of  Western  civilisation,  as  grain  might  be  crushed  in  a  mill. 
In  the  last  stanza  of  the  composition  you  will  doubtless 
have  observed  the  pathetic  reference  to  the  meaning  of  the 
song  of  the  sea,  mysterious  and  awful  beyond  all  other 
sounds  of  nature.  Rossetti  has  not  failed  to  consider  this 
sound,  philosophically  and  emotionally,  in  one  of  his  most 
beautiful  poems.  And  now  I  want  to  show  you,  by  illus- 
tration, the  difference  between  a  really  pessimistic  treatment 
of  a  subject  and  Rossetti's  treatment  of  it.  Perhaps  the 
very  finest  example  of  pessimism  in  Victorian  poetry  is  a 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  45 

sonnet  by  Lee-Hamilton,  on  the  subject  of  a  sea-shell. 
You  know  that  if  you  take  a  large  sea-shell  of  a  particular 
form,  and  hold  it  close  to  your  ear,  you  will  hear  a  sound 
like  the  sound  of  the  surf,  as  if  the  ghost  of  the  sea  were  in 
the  shell.  Nearly  all  English  children  have  the  experience 
of  listening  to  the  sound  of  the  sea  in  a  shell ;  it  startles  them 
at  first;  but  nobody  tells  them  what  the  sound  really  is, 
for  that  would  spoil  their  surprise  and  delight.  You  must 
not  tell  a  child  that  there  are  no  ghosts  or  fairies.  Well, 
Rossetti  and  Lee-Hamilton  wrote  about  this  sound  of  the 
sea  in  a  shell — but  how  differently  I  Here  is  Lee-Hamil- 
ton's composition : 

The  hollow  sea-shell,  which  for  years  hath  stood 
On  dusty  shelves,  when  held  against  the  ear 
Proclaims  its  stormy  parent ;  and  we  hear 
The  faint  far  murmur  of  the  breaking  flood. 
We  hear  the  sea.     The  sea?     It  is  the  blood 
In  our  own  veins,  impetuous  and  near, 
And  pulses  keeping  pace  with  hope  and  fear, 
And  with  our  feelings'  ever-shifting  mood. 

Lo  I  in  my  heart  I  hear,  as  in  a  shell, 
The  murmur  of  a  world  beyond  the  grave, 
Distinct,  distinct,  though  faint  and  far  it  be. 
Thou  fool ;  this  echo  is  a  cheat  as  well, — 
The  hum  of  earthly  instincts ;  and  we  crave 
A  world  unreal  as  the  shell-heard  sea. 

Of  course  this  is  a  very  fine  poem,  so  far  as  the  poetry  is 
concerned.  But  it  is  pessimism  absolute.  Its  author,  a 
brilliant  graduate  of  Oxford  University,  entered  the  Eng- 
lish diplomatic  service  as  a  young  man,  and  in  the  middle 
of  a  promising  career  was  attacked  by  a  disease  of  the  spine 
which  left  him  a  hopeless  invalid.  We  might  say  that  he 
had  some  reason  to  look  at  the  world  in  a  dark  light.  But 
such  poetry  is  not  healthy.  It  is  morbid.  It  means  retro- 
gression. It  brings  a  sharp  truth  to  the  mind  with  a  pain- 
ful shock,  and  leaves  an  after-impression  of  gloom  unspeak- 


46  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

able.  As  I  said  before,  we  must  not  spoil  the  happiness  of 
children  by  telling  them  that  there  are  no  ghosts  or  fairies. 
So  we  must  not  tell  the  humanity  which  believes  in  happi- 
ness after  death  that  there  is  no  heaven.  All  progress  is 
through  faith  and  hope  in  something.  The  measure  of  a 
poet  is  in  the  largeness  of  the  thought  which  he  can  apply 
to  any  subject,  however  trifling.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  let 
us  now  see  how  the  same  subject  of  the  sea-shell  appeals 
to  the  thought  of  Rossetti.  You  will  then  perceive  the 
difference   between  pessimism   and  philosophical   humani- 


tarianism. 


THE  SEA-LIMITS 

Consider  the  sea's  listless  chime : 
Time's  self  it  is,  made  audible, — 
The  murmur  of  the  earth's  own  shell. 

Secret  continuance  sublime 

Is  the  sea's  end :  our  sight  may  pass 
No  furlong  further.     Since  time  was, 

This  sound  hath  told  the  lapse  of  time. 

No  quiet,  which  is  death's, — it  hath 

The  mournfulness  of  ancient  life, 

Enduring  always  at  dull  strife. 
As  the  world's  heart  of  rest  and  wrath, 

Its  painful  pulse  is  in  the  sands. 

Last  utterly,  the  whole  sky  stands, 
Grey  and  not  known,  along  its  path. 

Listen  alone  beside  the  sea. 

Listen  alone  among  the  woods ; 

Those  voices  of  twin  solitudes 
Shall  have  one  sound  alike  to  thee: 

Hark  where  the  murmurs  of  thronged  men 

Surge  and  sink  back  and  surge  again, — 
Still  the  one  voice  of  wave  and  tree. 

Gather  a  shell  from  the  strewn  beach 
And  listen  at  its  lips :  they  sigh 
The  same  desire  and  mystery. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  47 

The  echo  of  the  whole  sea's  speech. 

And  all  mankind  is  thus  at  heart 

Not  anything  but  what  thou  art: 
And  Earth,  Sea,  Man,  are  all  in  each. 

In  the  last  beautiful  stanza  we  have  a  comparison  as 
sublime  as  any  ever  made  by  any  poet — of  the  human  heart, 
the  human  life,  re-echoing  the  murmur  of  the  infinite  Sea 
of  Life.  As  the  same  sound  of  the  sea  is  heard  in  every 
shell,  so  in  every  human  heart  is  the  same  ghostly  murmur 
of  Universal  Being.  The  sound  of  the  sea,  the  sound  of 
the  forest,  the  sound  of  men  in  cities,  not  only  are  the  same 
to  the  ear,  but  they  tell  the  same  story  of  pain.  The  sound 
of  the  sea  is  a  sound  of  perpetual  strife,  the  sound  of  the 
woods  in  the  wind  is  a  sound  of  ceaseless  struggle,  the  tu- 
mult of  a  great  city  is  also  a  tumult  of  effort.  In  this  sense 
all  the  three  sounds  are  but  one,  and  that  one  is  the  sound 
of  life  everywhere.  Life  is  pain,  and  therefore  sadness. 
The  world  itself  is  like  a  great  shell  full  of  this  sound.  But 
it  is  a  shell  on  the  verge  of  the  Infinite.  The  millions  of 
suns,  the  millions  of  planets  and  moons,  are  all  of  them  but 
shells  on  the  shore  of  the  everlasting  sea  of  death  and  birth, 
and  each  would,  if  we  could  hear  it,  convey  to  our  ears  and 
hearts  the  one  same  murmur  of  pain.  This  is,  to  my  think- 
ing, a  much  vaster  conception  than  anything  to  be  found  in 
Tennyson ;  and  such  a  poem  as  that  of  Lee-Hamilton  dwin- 
dles into  nothingness  beside  it,  for  we  have  here  all  that 
man  can  know  of  our  relation  to  the  universe,  and  the  mys- 
tery of  that  universe  brought  before  us  by  a  simile  of  in- 
comparable sublimity. 

Before  leaving  this  important  class  of  poems,  let  me  cite 
another  instance  of  the  comparative  nearness  of  Rossetti  at 
times  to  Oriental  thought.  It  is  the  fifteenth  of  that  won- 
derful set  of  sonnets  entitled  the  "House  of  Life." 

THE  BIRTH-BOND 
Have  you  not  noted,  in  some  family 

Where  two  were  born  of  a  first  marriage-bed, 


48  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

How  still  they  own  their  gracious  bond,  though  fed 
And  nursed  on  the  forgotten  breast  and  knee? — 
How  to  their  father's  children  they  shall  be 

In  act  and  thought  of  one  goodwill ;  but  each 

Shall  for  the  other  have,  in  silence  speech, 
And  in  a  word  complete  community? 

Even  so,  when  I  first  saw  you,  seemed  it,  love. 
That  among  souls  allied  to  mine  was  yet 

One  nearer  kindred  than  life  hinted  of. 

O  born  with  me  somewhere  that  men  forget. 
And  though  in  years  of  sight  and  sound  unmet, 

Known  for  my  soul's  birth-partner  well  enough  I 

This  beautiful  little  thought  of  love  is  almost  exactly  the 
same  as  that  suggested  in  a  well-known  Japanese  proverb 
about  the  relations  of  a  previous  existence.  We  have  here, 
in  an  English  poet,  who  very  probably  never  read  anything 
about  Buddhism,  the  very  idea  of  the  Buddhist  en.  The 
whole  tendency  of  the  poet's  mind  was  toward  larger  things 
than  his  early  training  had  prepared  him  for. 

Yet  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  Rossetti  a  pure 
mystic;  he  was  too  much  of  an  artist  for  that.  No  one  felt 
the  sensuous  charm  of  life  more  keenly,  nor  the  attraction 
of  plastic  beauty  and  grace.  By  way  of  an  interlude,  we 
may  turn  for  a  time  to  his  more  sensuous  poetry.  It  is  by 
this  that  he  is  best  known;  for  you  need  not  suppose  that 
the  general  English  public  understands  such  poems  as  those 
which  we  have  been  examining.  Keep  in  mind  that  there 
is  a  good  deal  of  difference  between  the  adjectives  "sensu- 
ous" and  "sensual."  The  former  has  no  evil  meaning;  it 
refers  only  to  sense-impression — to  sensations  visual,  audi- 
tory, tactile.  The  other  adjective  is  more  commonly  used 
in  a  bad  sense.  At  one  time  an  attempt  was  made  to  injure 
Rossetti  by  applying  it  to  his  work;  but  all  good  critics  have 
severely  condemned  that  attempt,  and  Rossetti  must  not  be 
regarded  as  in  any  sense  an  immoral  poet. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  49 


II 


To  the  cultivated  the  very  highest  quality  of  emotional 
poetry  is  that  given  by  blending  the  artistically  sensuous 
with  the  mystic.  This  very  rare  quality  colours  the  greater 
part  of  Rossetti's  work.  Perhaps  one  may  even  say  that  it 
is  never  entirely  absent.  Only,  the  proportions  of  the 
blending  vary,  like  those  mixtures  of  red  and  blue,  crimson 
and  azure,  which  may  give  us  either  purple  or  violet  of  dif- 
ferent shades  according  to  the  wish  of  the  dyer.  The  qual- 
ity of  mysticism  dominates  in  the  symbolic  poems;  we 
might  call  those  deep  purple.  The  sensuous  element  domi- 
nates in  most  of  the  ballads  and  narrative  poems;  we  might 
say  that  these  have  rather  the  tone  of  bright  violet.  But 
even  in  the  ballads  there  is  a  very  great  difference  in  the 
proportions  of  the  two  qualities.  The  highest  tone  is  in  the 
"Blessed  Damozel,"  and  in  the  beautiful  narrative  poem 
of  the  "Staff  and  Scrip";  while  the  lowest  tone  is  perhaps 
that  of  the  ballad  of  "Eden  Bower,"  which  describes  the 
two  passions  of  lust  and  hate  at  their  greatest  intensity. 
But  everything  is  beautifully  finished  as  work,  and  unap- 
proachably exquisite  in  feeling.  I  think  the  best  example 
of  what  I  have  called  the  violet  style  is  the  ballad  of  "Troy 
Town." 

Heavenborn  Helen,  Sparta's  Queen, 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Had  two  breasts  of  heavenly  sheen, 
The  sun  and  moon  of  the  heart's  desire : 
All  Love's  lordship  lay  between. 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire/) 

Helen  knelt  at  Venus'  shrine, 

(0  Troy  Town!) 
Saying,  "A  little  gift  is  mine, 
A  little  gift  for  a  heart's  desire. 


50  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Hear  me  speak  and  make  me  a  sign ! 
(0  Troy's  down! 
Tall  Troy's  on  fire/) 

"Look!     I  bring  thee  a  carven  cup; 

(0  Troy  Town!) 
See  it  here  as  I  hold  it  up, — 
Shaped  it  is  to  the  heart's  desire, 
Fit  to  fill  when  the  gods  would  sup. 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

"It  was  moulded  like  my  breast ; 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
He  that  sees  it  may  not  rest, 
Rest  at  all  for  his  heart's  desire. 
O  give  ear  to  my  heart's  behest! 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

"See  my  breast,  how  like  it  is ; 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
See  it  bare  for  the  air  to  kiss ! 
Is  the  cup  to  thy  heart's  desire  ? 
O  for  the  breast,  O  make  it  his ! 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

"Yea,  for  my  bosom  here  I  sue ; 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Thou  must  give  it  where  'tis  due. 
Give  it  there  to  the  heart's  desire. 
Whom  do  I  give  my  bosom  to? 

(6>  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

"Each  twin  breast  is  an  apple  sweet! 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Once  an  apple  stirred  the  beat 
Of  thy  heart  with  the  heart's  desire: — 
Say,  who  brought  it  then  to  thy  feet? 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  51 

"They  that  claimed  it  then  were  three: 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
For  thy  sake  two  hearts  did  he 
Make  forlorn  of  the  heart's  desire. 
Do  for  him  as  he  did  for  thee ! 

(6^  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

"Mine  are  apples  grown  to  the  south, 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Grown  to  taste  in  the  days  of  drouth, 
Taste  and  waste  to  the  heart's  desire : 
Mine  are  apples  meet  for  his  mouth !" 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

Venus  looked  on  Helen's  gift, 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Looked  and  smiled  with  subtle  drift. 
Saw  the  work  of  her  heart's  desire : — 
"There  thou  kneel'st  for  Love  to  lift!" 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

Venus  looked  in  Helen's  face, 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Knew  far  off  an  hour  and  place. 
And  fire  lit  from  the  heart's  desire; 
Laughed  and  said,  "Thy  gift  hath  grace !" 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

Cupid  looked  on  Helen's  breast, 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Saw  the  heart  within  its  nest, 
Saw  the  flame  of  the  heart's  desire, — 
Marked  his  arrow's  burning  crest. 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

Cupid  took  another  dart, 
{0  Troy  Town!) 
Fledged  it  for  another  heart, 


52  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Winged  the  shaft  with  the  heart's  desire, 
Drew  the  string,  and  said  "Depart!" 

(0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

Paris  turned  upon  his  bed, 

{0  Troy  Town!) 
Turned  upon  his  bed,  and  said, 
Dead  at  heart  with  the  heart's  desire, — 
"O  to  clasp  her  golden  head  I" 

{0  Troy's  down! 

Tall  Troy's  on  fire!) 

This  wonderful  ballad,  with  its  single  and  its  double  re- 
frains, represents  Rossetti's  nearest  approach  to  earth, 
except  the  ballad  of  "Eden  Bower."  Usually  he  seldom 
touches  the  ground,  but  moves  at  some  distance  above  it, 
just  as  one  flies  in  dreams.  But  you  will  observe  that  the 
mysticism  here  has  almost  vanished.  There  is  just  a  little 
ghostliness  to  remind  you  that  the  writer  is  no  common 
singer,  but  a  poet  able  to  give  a  thrill.  The  ghostliness  is 
chiefly  in  the  fact  of  the  supernatural  elements  involved; 
Helen  with  her  warm  breast  we  feel  to  be  a  real  woman, 
but  Venus  and  love  are  phantoms,  who  speak  and  act  as 
figures  in  sleep.  This  is  true  art  under  the  circumstances. 
We  feel  nothing  more  human  until  we  come  to  the  last 
stanza;  then  we  hear  it  in  the  cry  of  Paris.  But  why  do 
I  say  that  this  is  high  art  to  make  the  gods  as  they  are  made 
here?  The  Greeks  would  have  made  Venus  and  Cupid 
purely  human.  But  Rossetti  is  not  taking  the  Greek  view 
of  the  subject  at  all.  He  is  taking  the  mediiEval  one.  He 
is  writing  of  Greek  gods  and  Greek  legends  as  such  subjects 
were  felt  by  Chaucer  and  by  the  French  poets  of  the  thir- 
teenth and  fourteenth  centuries.  It  would  not  be  easy  to 
explain  the  mediaeval  tone  of  the  poem  to  you ;  that  would 
require  a  comparison  with  the  work  of  very  much  older 
poets.  I  only  want  now  to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact 
that  even  in  a  Greek  subject  of  the  sensuous  kind  Rossetti 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  53 

always  keeps  the  tone  of  the  Middle  Ages;  and  that  tone 
was  mystical. 

Having  given  this  beautiful  example  of  the  least  mysti- 
cal class  of  Rossetti's  light  poems,  let  us  pass  at  once  to  the 
most  mystical.  These  are  in  all  respects,  I  am  not  afraid 
to  say,  far  superior.  The  poem  by  which  Rossetti  became 
first  widely  known  and  admired  was  "The  Blessed  Damo- 
zel."  This  and  a  lovely  narrative  poem  entitled  "Staff  and 
Scrip"  form  the  most  exquisite  examples  of  the  poet's  treat- 
ment of  mystical  love.  You  should  know  both  of  them; 
but  we  shall  first  take  "The  Blessed  Damozel." 

This  is  the  story  of  a  woman  in  heaven,  speaking  of  the 
man  she  loved  on  earth.  She  is  waiting  for  him.  She 
watches  every  new  soul  that  comes  to  heaven,  hoping  that 
it  may  be  the  soul  of  her  lover.  While  waiting  thus,  she 
talks  to  herself  about  what  she  will  do  to  make  her  lover 
happy  when  he  comes,  how  she  will  show  him  all  the  beau- 
tiful things  in  heaven,  and  will  introduce  him  to  the  holy 
saints  and  angels.  That  is  all.  But  it  is  very  wonderful 
in  its  sweetness  of  simple  pathos,  and  in  a  peculiar,  inde- 
scribable quaintness  which  is  not  of  the  nineteenth  century 
at  all.  It  is  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Italian  Middle  Ages 
before  the  time  of  Raphael.  The  heaven  painted  here  is 
not  the  heaven  of  modern  Christianity — if  modern  Chris- 
tianity can  be  said  to  have  a  heaven;  it  is  the  heaven  of 
Dante,  a  heaven  almost  as  sharply  defined  as  if  it  were  on 
earth. 

THE  BLESSED  DAMOZEL 

The  blessed  damozel  leaned  out 

From  the  gold  bar  of  Heaven ; 
Her  eyes  were  deeper  than  the  depth 

Of  waters  stilled  at  even ; 
She  had  three  lilies  in  her  hand, 

And  the  stars  in  her  hair  were  seven. 

Damozel.  This  is  only  a  quaint  form  of  the  same  word 
which  in  modern  French  signifies  a  young  lady — demoiselle. 


54  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

The  suggestion  is  not  simply  that  it  is  a  maiden  that  speaks, 
but  a  maiden  of  noble  blood.  The  idea  of  the  poet  is  ex- 
actly that  of  Dante  in  speaking  of  Beatrice.  Seven  is  the 
mystical  number  of  Christianity. 

Her  robe,  ungirt  from  clasp  to  hem, 

No  wrought  flowers  did  adorn, 
But  a  white  rose  of  Mary's  gift, 

For  service  meetly  worn  ; 
Her  hair  that  lay  along  her  back 

Was  yellow  like  ripe  corn. 

Clasp.  The  ornamental  fastening  of  the  dress  at  the 
neck.  "From  clasp  to  hem"  thus  signifies  simply  "from 
neck  to  feet,"  for  the  hem  of  a  garment  means  especially 
its  lower  edge.  Wrought  flowers  here  means  embroidered 
flowers.  The  dress  has  no  ornament  and  no  girdle;  it  is  a 
dress  of  the  thirteenth  century  as  to  form ;  but  it  may  inter- 
est you  to  know  that  usually  in  religious  pictures  of  angels 
and  heavenly  souls  (the  French  religious  prints  are  incom- 
parably the  best)  there  is  no  girdle,  and  the  robe  falls 
straight  from  neck  to  feet.  Service.  The  maiden  in 
heaven  becomes  a  servant  of  the  Mother  of  God.  But  the 
mediaeval  idea  was  that  the  daughter  of  a  very  noble  house, 
entering  heaven,  might  be  honoured  by  being  taken  into  the 
service  of  Mary,  just  as  in  this  world  one  might  be  hon- 
oured by  being  taken  into  the  personal  service  of  a  queen 
or  emperor.  A  white  rose  is  worn  as  the  badge  or  mark 
of  this  distinction,  because  white  is  the  symbol  of  chastity, 
and  Mary  is  especially  the  patron  of  chastity.  In  heaven 
also — the  heaven  of  Dante — the  white  rose  has  many  sym- 
bolic significations.  Telloiv.  Compare  "Elle  est  blonde 
comme  le  ble.''     (De  Musset.) 

Herseemed  she  scarce  had  been  a  day 

One  of  God's  choristers ; 
The  wonder  was  not  yet  quite  gone 

From  that  still  look  of  hers; 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  55 

Albeit,  to  them  she  left,  her  day 
Had  counted  as  ten  years. 

Herseemed.  This  word  is  very  unusual,  even  obsolete. 
Formerly  instead  of  saying  "it  seems  to  me,"  "it  seems  to 
him,"  English  people  used  to  say  meseems,  himseems,  her- 
seems.  The  word  "meseems"  is  still  used,  but  only  in  the 
present,  with  rare  exceptions.  It  is  becoming  obsolete  also. 
Choristers.  Choir-singers.  The  daily  duty  of  angels  and 
souls  in  heaven  was  supposed  to  be  to  sing  the  praises  of 
God,  just  as  on  earth  hymns  are  sung  in  church.  Albeit. 
An  ancient  form  of  "although." 

(To  one,  it  is  ten  years  of  years, 

.  .  .  Yet  now,  and  in  this  place. 
Surely  she  leaned  o'er  me — her  hair 

Fell  all  about  my  face.  .  .  . 
Nothing:  the  autumn-fall  of  leaves. 

The  whole  year  sets  apace.) 

Ten  years  of  years.  That  is,  years  composed  not  of  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  days,  but  of  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  years.  To  the  lover  on  earth,  deprived  of  his  beloved 
by  death,  the  time  passes  slowly  so  that  a  day  seems  as  long 
as  a  year.  Sometimes  he  imagines  that  he  feels  the  dead 
bending  over  him — that  he  feels  her  hair  falling  over  his 
face.  When  he  looks,  he  finds  that  it  is  only  the  leaves  of 
the  trees  that  have  been  falling  upon  him;  and  he  knows 
that  the  autumn  has  come,  and  that  the  year  is  slowly- 
dying. 

It  was  the  rampart  of  God's  house 

That  she  was  standing  on; 
By  God  built  over  the  sheer  depth 

The  which  is  Space  begun  ; 
So  high,  that  looking  downward  thence 

She  scarce  could  see  the  sun. 

Rampart^  you  know,  means  part  of  a  fortification ;  all  the 
nobility  of  the  Middle  Ages  lived  in  castles  or  fortresses. 


56  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

and  their  idea  of  heaven  was  necessarily  the  idea  of  a  splen- 
did castle.  In  the  "Song  of  Roland"  we  find  the  angels 
and  the  saints  spoken  of  as  knights  and  ladies,  and  the  lan- 
guage they  use  is  the  language  of  chivalry.  Sheer  depths 
straight  down,  perpendicularly,  absolute.  God's  castle 
overlooks,  not  a  landscape,  but  space ;  the  sun  and  the  stars 
lie  far  below. 

It  lies  in  Heaven,  across  the  flood 

Of  ether,  as  a  bridge. 
Beneath,  the  tides  of  day  and  night 

With  flame  and  darkness  ridge 
The  void,  as  low  as  where  this  earth 

Spins  like  a  fretful  midge. 

Around  her,  lovers,  newly  met 

'Mid  deathless  love's  acclaims. 
Spoke  ever  more  among  themselves 

Their  heart-remembered  names ; 
And  the  souls  mounting  up  to  God 

Went  by  her  like  thin  flames. 

Ether.  This  is  not  the  modern  word,  the  scientific  ether, 
but  the  Greek  and  also  mediaeval  ether,  the  most  spiritual 
form  of  matter.  The  house  of  God,  or  heaven,  rests  upon 
nothing,  but  stretches  out  like  a  bridge  over  the  ether  itself. 
Far  below  something  like  enormous  waves  seem  to  be  sound- 
lessly passing,  light  and  dark.  Even  in  heaven,  and 
throughout  the  universe,  it  was  supposed  in  the  Middle  Ages 
that  there  were  successions  of  day  and  night  independent  of 
the  sun.  These  are  the  "tides"  described.  Ridge  the  void 
means,  make  ridges  or  wave-like  lines  in  the  ether  of  space. 
Midge  is  used  in  English  just  as  the  word  kobai  is  used  in 
Japanese.  Fretful  midge,  a  midge  that  moves  very  quickly 
as  if  fretted  or  frightened. 

And  still  she  bowed  herself  and  stooped 

Out  of  the  circling  charm ; 
Until  her  bosom  must  have  made 

The  bar  she  leaned  on  warm, 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  57 

And  the  lilies  lay  as  if  asleep 
Along  her  bended  arm. 

Charm.  The  circling  charm  is  not  merely  the  gold  rail- 
ing upon  which  she  leans,  but  the  magical  limits  of  heaven 
itself  which  holds  the  souls  back.  She  cannot  pass  beyond 
them.  Otherwise  her  wish  would  take  her  back  to  this 
world  to  watch  by  her  living  lover.  But  only  the  angels, 
who  are  the  messengers  of  heaven,  can  go  beyond  the  bound- 
aries. 

From  the  fixed  place  of  Heaven  she  saw 

Time  like  a  pulse  shake  fierce 
Through  all  the  worlds.     Her  gaze  still  strove 

Within  the  gulf  to  pierce 
Its  path ;  and  now  she  spoke  as  when 

The  stars  sang  in  their  spheres. 

Shake.  Here  in  the  sense  of  to  beat  like  a  heart  or 
pulse.  Heaven  about  her  is  motionless,  fixed;  but  looking 
down  upon  the  universe  she  sees  a  luminous  motion,  regu- 
lar like  a  heart-beat;  that  is  Time.  Its  path.  Her  eyes 
tried  to  pierce  a  way  or  path  for  themselves  through  space; 
that  is,  she  made  a  desperate  effort  to  see  farther  than  she 
could  see.  She  is  looking  in  vain  for  the  coming  of  her 
lover.  Their  spheres.  This  is  an  allusion  to  a  biblical 
verse,  "when  the  morning  stars  sang  together."  It  was  said 
that  when  the  world  was  created  the  stars  sang  for  joy. 

The  sun  was  gone  now ;  the  curled  moon 

Was  like  a  little  feather 
Fluttering  far  down  the  gulf;  and  now 

She  spoke  through  the  still  weather. 
Her  voice  was  like  the  voice  the  stars 

Had  when  they  sang  together. 

(Ah  sweet!     Even  now,  in  that  bird's  song, 

Strove  not  her  accents  there, 
Fain  to  be  hearkened?     When  those  bells 

Possessed  the  mid-day  air. 


58  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Strove  not  her  steps  to  reach  my  side 
Down  all  the  echoing  stair?) 

Stair.  We  must  suppose  the  lover  to  be  in  or  near  a 
church  with  a  steeple,  or  lofty  bell  tower.  Outside  he 
hears  a  bird  singing;  and  in  the  sweetness  of  its  song  he 
thinks  that  he  hears  the  voice  of  the  dead  girl  speaking  to 
him.  Then,  as  the  church  bells  send  down  to  him  great 
sweet  waves  of  sound  from  the  tower,  he  imagines  that  he 
can  hear,  in  the  volume  of  the  sound,  something  like  a 
whispering  of  robes  and  faint  steps  as  of  a  spirit  trying  to 
descend  to  his  side. 

"I  wish  that  he  were  come  to  me, 

For  he  will  come,"  she  said. 
"Have  I  not  prayed  in  Heaven"? — on  earth, 

Lord,  Lord,  has  he  not  prayed  ? 
Are  not  two  prayers  a  perfect  strength  ? 

And  shall  I  feel  afraid? 

An  allusion  to  a  verse  in  the  New  Testament — "if  two 
of  you  shall  agree  on  earth  as  touching  anything  that  they 
shall  ask,  it  shall  be  done  for  them."  She  is  a  little  afraid 
that  her  lover  may  not  get  to  heaven  after  all,  but  she  sud- 
denly remembers  this  verse,  and  it  gives  her  encouragement. 
Perfect  strength  means  strength  of  prayer,  the  power  of  the 
prayer  to  obtain  what  is  prayed  for.  As  she  and  he  have 
both  been  praying  for  reunion  in  heaven,  and  as  Christ  has 
promised  that  whatever  two  people  pray  for,  shall  be 
granted,  she  feels  consoled. 

"When  round  his  head  the  aureole  clings, 

And  he  is  clothed  in  white, 
I'll  take  his  hand  and  go  with  him 

To  the  deep  wells  of  light ; 
As  unto  a  stream  we  will  step  down, 

And  bathe  there  in  God's  sight. 

The  aureole  is  the  circle  or  disk  of  golden  light  round  the 
head  of  a  saint.     Sometimes  it  is  called  a  "glory."     In 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  59 

some  respects  the  aureole  of  Christian  art  much  resembles 
that  of  Buddhist  art,  with  this  exception,  that  some  of  the 
Oriental  forms  are  much  richer  and  more  elaborate.  Three 
forms  in  Christian  art  are  especially  common — the  plain 
circle;  the  disk,  like  a  moon  or  sun,  usually  made  in  art  by 
a  solid  plate  of  gilded  material  behind  the  head;  the  full 
"glory,"  enshrining  the  whole  figure.  There  is  only  one 
curious  fact  to  which  I  need  further  refer  here;  it  is  that 
the  Holy  Ghost  in  Christian  art  has  a  glory  of  a  special 
kind — the  triangle.  White.  This  is  a  reference  to  the  de- 
scription of  heaven  in  the  paradise  of  St.  John's  vision, 
where  all  the  saints  are  represented  in  white  garments. 
Deep  "wells  of  light.  Another  reference  to  St.  John's  vi- 
sion. Rev.  xxii,  l — "And  he  showed  me  a  pure  river  of 
water  of  life,  clear  as  crystal,  proceeding  out  of  the  throne 
of  God."  In  the  heaven  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  in  the 
Buddhist  paradise,  we  find  also  lakes  and  fountains  of  light, 
or  of  liquid  jewels. 

"We  two  will  stand  beside  that  shrine, 

Occult,  withheld,  untrod. 
Whose  lamps  are  stirred  continually 

With  prayer  sent  up  to  God ; 
And  see  our  old  prayers,  granted,  melt 

Each  like  a  little  cloud. 

Shrine.  The  Holy  of  Holies,  or  innermost  sanctuary  of 
heaven,  imagined  by  mediseval  faith  as  a  sort  of  reserved 
chapel.  But  the  origin  of  the  fancy  will  be  explained  in 
the  next  note.  Lamps.  See  again  St.  John's  vision.  Rev. 
iv,  5 — "And  there  were  seven  lamps  of  fire  burning  before 
the  throne,  which  are  the  seven  Spirits  of  God."  These 
mystical  flames,  representing  special  virtues  and  powers, 
would  be  agitated  according  to  the  special  virtues  corre- 
sponding to  them  in  the  ascending  prayers  of  men.  But 
now  we  come  to  another  and  stranger  thought.  A  little 
cloud.     See  again  Rev.  v,  8,  in  which  reference  is  made  to 


60  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

"golden  vials,  full  of  incense,  which  are  the  prayers  of  the 
saints."  Here  we  see  the  evidence  of  a  curious  belief  that 
prayers  in  heaven  actually  become  transformed  into  the  sub- 
stance of  incense.  By  the  Talmudists  it  was  said  that  they 
were  turned  into  beautiful  flowers.  Again,  in  Rev.  viii,  3, 
we  have  an  allusion  to  this  incense,  made  of  prayer,  being 
burned  in  heaven — "And  there  was  given  unto  him  much  in- 
cense, that  he  should  offer  it  with  the  prayers  of  all  saints." 
Now  the  poem  can  be  better  understood.  The  Blessed 
Damozel  thinks  that  her  old  prayers,  that  is  to  say,  the 
prayers  that  she  made  on  earth,  together  with  those  of  her 
lover,  are  in  heaven  in  the  shape  of  incense.  As  long  as 
prayer  is  not  granted,  it  remains  incense;  when  granted  it 
becomes  perfume  smoke  and  vanishes.  Therefore  she  says, 
"We  shall  see  our  old  prayers,  granted,  melt  each  like  a 
little  cloud" — that  is,  a  cloud  of  smoke  of  incense. 

"We  two  will  lie  i'  the  shadow  of 

That  living  mystic  tree 
Within  whose  secret  growth  the  Dove 

Is  sometimes  felt  to  be, 
While  every  leaf  that  His  plumes  touch 

Saith  His  Name  audibly. 

The  heavenly  tree  of  life  is  described  in  Rev.  xxvii,  2,  as 
bearing  twelve  different  kinds  of  fruit,  one  for  each  of  the 
twelve  months  of  the  year,  while  its  leaves  heal  all  diseases 
or  troubles  of  any  kind.  The  Dove  is  the  Holy  Ghost,  who 
is  commonly  represented  in  Christian  art  by  this  bird,  when 
he  is  not  represented  by  a  tongue  or  flame  of  fire.  Every 
time  that  a  leaf  touches  the  body  of  the  Dove,  we  are  told 
that  the  leaf  repeats  the  name  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  In 
what  language?  Probably  in  Latin,  and  the  sound  of  the 
Latin  name  would  be  like  the  sound  of  the  motion  of  leaves, 
stirred  by  a  wind:  functus  Spiritus. 

"And  I  myself  will  teach  to  him, 
I  myself,  lying  so, 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  61 

The  songs  I  sing  here ;  which  his  voice 

Shall  pause  in,  hushed  and  slow, 
And  find  some  knowledge  at  each  pause, 

Or  some  new  thing  to  know." 

(Alas !  we  two,  we  two,  thou  say'st ! 

Yea,  one  wast  thou  with  me 
That  once  of  old.     But  shall  God  lift 

To  endless  unity 
The  soul  whose  likeness  with  thy  soul 

Was  but  its  love  for  thee?) 

It  is  the  lover  who  now  speaks,  commenting  upon  the 
imagined  words  of  the  beloved  in  heaven.  Endless  unity 
here  has  a  double  meaning,  signifying  at  once  the  mystical 
union  of  the  soul  with  God,  and  the  reunion  forever  of 
lovers  separated  by  death.  The  lover  doubts  whether  he 
can  be  found  worthy  to  enter  heaven,  because  his  only  like- 
ness to  the  beloved  was  in  his  love  for  her;  that  is  to  say, 
his  merit  was  not  so  much  in  being  good  as  in  loving  good 
in  another. 

"We  two,"  she  said,  "will  seek  the  groves 

Where  the  lady  Mary  is. 
With  her  fine  handmaidens,  whose  names 

Are  five  sweet  symphonies, 
Cecily,  Gertrude,  Magdalen, 

Margaret,  and  Rosalys. 

Notice  the  mediaeval  method  of  speaking  of  the  mother 
of  God  as  "the  lady  Mary" ;  such  would  have  been  the  form 
of  address  for  a  princess  or  queen  in  those  times.  So  King 
Arthur's  wife,  in  the  old  romance,  is  called  the  lady  Guine- 
vere. Symphonies  here  has  only  the  simplest  meaning  of 
a  sweet  sound,  not  of  a  combination  of  sounds;  but  the  use 
of  the  word  nevertheless  implies  to  a  delicate  ear  that  the 
five  names  make  harmony  with  each  other.  They  are 
names  of  saints,  but  also  favourite  names  given  to  daughters 
of  great  families  as  Christian  names.     The  picture  is  simply 


62  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

that  of  the  lady  of  a  great  castle,  surrounded  by  her  wait- 
ing women,  engaged  in  weaving  and  sewing. 

"Circlewlse  sit  they,  with  bound  locks 

And  foreheads  garlanded; 
Into  the  fine  cloth  white  like  flame 

Weaving  the  golden  thread, 
To  fashion  the  birth-robes  for  them 

Who  are  just  born,  being  dead. 

Wdlk  bound  locks  means  only  with  the  hair  tied  up,  not 
flowing  loose,  as  was  usual  in  figures  of  saints  and  angels. 
They  are  weaving  garments  for  new  souls  received  into 
heaven,  just  as  mothers  might  weave  cloth  for  a  child  soon 
to  be  born.  The  description  of  the  luminous  white  cloth 
might  be  compared  with  descriptions  in  Revelation.  Being 
dead.  Christianity,  like  the  Oriental  religions,  calls  death 
a  rebirth;  but  the  doctrinal  idea  is  entirely  different.  You 
will  remember  that  the  Greeks  represented  the  soul  under 
the  form  of  a  butterfly.  Christianity  approaches  the  Greek 
fancy  by  considering  the  human  body  as  a  sort  of  caterpil- 
lar, which  enters  the  pupa-state  at  death;  the  soul  is  like 
the  butterfly  leaving  the  chrysalis.  So  far  everything  is 
easy  to  understand ;  but  this  rebirth  of  the  soul  is  only  half 
a  rebirth  in  the  Christian  sense.  The  body  is  also  to  be 
born  again  at  a  later  day.  At  present  there  are  only  souls 
in  heaven;  but  after  the  judgment  day  the  same  bodies 
which  they  used  to  have  during  life  are  to  be  given  back 
to  them.  Therefore  Rossetti  is  not  referring  here  to  rebirth 
except  in  the  sense  of  spiritual  rebirth,  as  Christ  used  it,  in 
saying  "Ye  must  be  born  again" — that  is,  obtain  new 
hearts,  new  feelings.  What  in  Oriental  poetry  would  rep- 
resent a  fact  of  belief,  here  represents  only  the  symbol  of  a 
belief,  a  belief  of  a  totally  different  kind. 

"He  shall  fear,  haply,  and  be  dumb : 

Then  will  I  lay  my  cheek 
To  his,  and  tell  about  our  love, 

Not  once  abashed  or  weak : 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  63 

And  the  dear  Mother  will  approve 
My  pride,  and  let  me  speak. 

"Herself  shall  bring  us,  hand  in  hand, 

To  Him  round  whom  all  souls 
Kneel,  the  clear-ranged  unnumbered  heads 

Bowed  with  their  aureoles : 
And  angels  meeting  us  shall  sing 

To  their  citherns  and  citoles. 

"There  will  I  ask  of  Christ  the  Lord 

Thus  much  for  him  and  me : — 
Only  to  live  as  once  on  earth 

With  Love,  only  to  be, 
As  then  awhile,  forever  now 

Together,  I  and  he." 

The  Damozel's  idea  is  that  her  lover  will  be  ashamed 
and  afraid  to  speak  to  the  mother  of  God  when  he  is  intro- 
duced to  her;  but  she  will  not  be  afraid  to  say  how  much 
she  loves  her  lover,  and  she  will  cause  the  lady  Mary  to 
bring  them  both  into  the  presence  of  God  himself,  identified 
here  rather  with  the  Son  than  with  the  Father.  Citherns 
and  citoles.  Both  words  are  derived  from  the  Latin 
cithara^  a  harp,  and  both  refer  to  long  obsolete  kinds  of 
stringed  instruments  used  during  the  twelfth,  thirteenth, 
and  fourteenth  centuries. 

She  gazed  and  listened  and  then  said. 

Less  sad  of  speech  than  mild, — 
"All  this  is  when  he  comes."     She  ceased. 

The  light  thrilled  toward  her,  filled 
With  angels  in  strong  level  flight. 

Her  eyes  prayed,  and  she  smiled. 

(I  saw  her  smile.)     But  soon  their  path 

Was  vague  in  distant  spheres : 
And  then  she  cast  her  arms  along 

The  golden  barriers. 
And  laid  her  face  between  her  hands. 

And  wept.     (I  heard  her  tears.) 


64.  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

In  these  beautiful  lines  we  are  reminded  of  the  special 
duty  of  angels,  from  which  they  take  their  name,  "mes- 
senger"— the  duty  of  communicating  between  earth  and 
heaven  and  bringing  the  souls  of  the  dead  to  paradise.  The 
Damozel,  waiting  and  watching  for  her  lover,  imagines, 
whenever  she  sees  the  angels  coming  from  the  direction  of 
the  human  world,  that  her  lover  may  be  coming  with  them. 
At  last  she  sees  a  band  of  angels  flying  straight  toward  her 
through  the  luminous  ether,  which  shivers  and  flashes  be- 
fore their  coming.  "Her  eyes  prayed,"  that  is,  expressed 
the  prayerful  desire  that  it  might  be  her  beloved;  and  she 
feels  almost  sure  that  it  is.  Then  comes  her  disappoint- 
ment, for  the  angels  pass  out  of  sight  in  another  direction, 
and  she  cries — even  in  heaven.  At  least  her  lover  imagines 
that  he  saw  and  heard  her  weeping. 

The  use  of  the  word  Damozel  needs  a  little  more  explana- 
tion, that  you  may  understand  the  great  art  with  which  the 
poem  was  arranged.  The  Old  French  damoisel  (later 
damoiseau)  signified  a  young  lad  of  noble  birth  or  knightly 
parentage,  employed  in  a  noble  house  as  page  or  squire. 
Originally  there  was  no  feminine  form;  but  afterwards  the 
form  damoselle  came  into  use,  signifying  a  young  lady  in 
the  corresponding  capacity.  Thus  Rossctti  in  choosing  the 
old  English  form  damozel  selected  perhaps  the  only  possible 
word  which  could  exactly  express  the  position  of  the  Damo- 
zel in  heaven,  as  well  as  the  mediaeval  conception  of  that 
heaven.  Our  English  word  "damsel,"  so  common  in  the 
Bible,  is  a  much  later  form  than  damozel.  There  was, 
however,  a  Middle  English  form  spelled  almost  like  the 
form  used  by  Rossetti,  except  that  there  was  an  "s"  instead 
of  a  "z." 

Now  you  will  better  see  the  meaning  of  Rossetti's  mysti- 
cism. When  you  make  religion  love,  without  ceasing  to 
be  religious,  and  make  love  religion,  without  ceasing  to  be 
human  and  sensuous,  in  the  good  sense  of  the  word,  then 
you  have  made  a  form  of  mysticism.     The  blending  in 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  65 

Rossetti  is  very  remarkable,  and  has  made  this  particular 
poem  the  most  famous  thing  which  he  wrote.  We  have 
here  a  picture  of  heaven,  with  all  its  mysteries  and  splen- 
dours, suspended  over  an  ocean  of  ether,  through  which 
souls  are  passing  like  an  upward  showering  of  fire;  and  all 
this  is  spiritual  enough.  But  the  Damozel,  with  her  yellow 
hair,  and  her  bosom  making  warm  what  she  leans  upon,  is 
very  human;  and  her  thoughts  are  not  of  the  immaterial 
kind.  The  suggestions  about  bathing  together,  about  em- 
bracing, cheek  against  cheek,  and  about  being  able  to  love 
in  heaven  as  on  earth,  have  all  the  delightful  innocence  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  soul  was  thought  of  only  as 
another  body  of  finer  substance.  Now  it  is  altogether 
the  human  warmth  of  the  poem  that  makes  its  intense  at- 
traction. Rarely  to-day  can  any  Western  poet  write  satis- 
factorily about  heavenly  things,  because  we  have  lost  the 
artless  feeling  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  we  cannot  think  of 
the  old  heaven  as  a  reality.  In  order  to  write  such  things, 
we  should  have  to  get  back  the  heart  of  our  fathers;  and 
Rossetti  happened  to  be  born  with  just  such  a  heart.  He 
had  probably  little  or  no  real  faith  in  religion;  but  he  was 
able  to  understand  exactly  how  religious  people  felt  hun- 
dreds of  years  ago. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  a  more  earthly  phase  of  the  same  tone 
of  love  which  appears  in  "The  Blessed  Damozel."  Now 
it  is  the  lover  himself  on  earth  who  is  speaking,  while  con- 
templating the  portrait  of  the  dead  woman  whom  he  loved. 
We  shall  only  make  extracts,  on  account  of  the  extremely 
elaborate  and  difficult  structure  of  the  poem. 

THE  PORTRAIT 

This  Is  her  picture  as  she  was : 

It  seems  a  thing  to  wonder  on, 
As  though  mine  image  in  the  glass 

Should  tarry  when  myself  am  gone. 
I  gaze  until  she  seems  to  stir, — 
Until  mine  eyes  almost  aver 


66  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

That  now,  even  now,  the  sweet  lips  part 
To  breathe  the  words  of  the  sweet  heart : — 
And  yet  the  earth  is  over  her. 

Even  so,  where  Heaven  holds  breath  and  hears 

The  beating  heart  of  Love's  own  breast, — 
Where  round  the  secret  of  all  spheres 

All  angels  lay  their  wings  to  rest, — 
How  shall  my  soul  stand  rapt  and  awed, 
When,  by  the  new  birth  borne  abroad 

Throughout  the  music  of  the  suns. 

It  enters  in  her  soul  at  once 
And  knows  the  silence  there  for  God ! 

Here  is  the  very  highest  form  of  mystical  love;  for  love 
is  identified  with  God,  and  the  reunion  in  heaven  is  a  blend- 
ing, not  with  a  mere  fellow  soul,  but  with  the  Supreme 
Being.  By  "silence"  here  you  must  understand  rest,  heav- 
enly peace.  The  closing  stanza  of  the  poem  contains  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  images  of  comparison  ever  made  in 
any  language. 

Here  with  her  face  doth  memory  sit 
Meanwhile,  and  wait  the  day's  decline, 

Till  other  eyes  shall  look  from  it, 
Eyes  of  the  spirit's  Palestine, 

Even  than  the  old  gaze  tenderer: 

While  hopes  and  aims  long  lost  with  her 
Stand  round  her  image  side  by  side, 
Like  tombs  of  pilgrims  that  have  died 

About  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

What  the  poet  means  is  this:  "Now  I  sit,  remembering 
the  past,  and  look  at  her  face  in  the  picture,  as  long  as  the 
light  of  day  remains.  Presently,  with  twilight  the  stars 
will  shine  out  like  eyes  in  heaven — heaven  which  is  my 
Holy  Land,  because  she  is  there.  Those  stars  will  then 
seem  to  me  even  as  her  eyes,  but  more  beautiful,  more  lov- 
ing than  the  living  eyes.  The  hopes  and  the  projects  which 
I  used  to  entertain  for  her  sake,  and  which  died  when  she 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  67 

died — they  come  back  to  mind,  but  like  the  graves  ranged 
around  the  grave  of  Christ  at  Jerusalem."  The  reference 
is  of  course  to  the  great  pilgrimages  of  the  Middle  Ages 
made  to  Jerusalem. 

More  than  the  artist  speaks  here;  and  if  there  be  not 
strong  faith,  there  is  at  least  beautiful  hope.  A  more  ten- 
der feeling  could  not  be  combined  with  a  greater  pathos; 
but  Rossetti  often  reaches  the  very  same  supreme  quality 
of  sentiment,  even  in  poems  of  a  character  closely  allied  to 
romance.  We  can  take  "The  Staif  and  Scrip"  as  an  ex- 
ample of  mediaeval  story  of  the  highest  emotional  quality. 

"Who  rules  these  lands?"  the  Pilgrim  said. 

"Stranger,  Queen  Blanchelys." 
"And  who  has  thus  harried  them?"  he  said. 

"It  was  Duke  Luke  did  this ; 
God's  ban  be  his  I" 

The  Pilgrim  said,  "Where  is  your  house  ? 

I'll  rest  there,  with  your  will." 
"You've  but  to  climb  these  blackened  boughs 

And  you'll  see  it  over  the  hill, 
For  it  burns  still." 

"Which  road,  to  seek  your  Queen?"  said  he. 

"Nay,  nay,  but  with  some  wound 
You'll  fly  back  hither,  it  may  be, 

And  by  your  blood  i'  the  ground 
My  place  be  found." 

"Friend,  stay  in  peace.     God  keep  your  head, 

And  mine,  where  I  will  go ; 
For  He  is  here  and  there,"  he  said. 

He  passed  the  hillside,  slow. 
And  stood  below. 

So  far  the  poem  is  so  simple  that  no  one  could  expect 
anything  very  beautiful  in  the  sequence.  We  only  have 
a  conversation  between  a  pilgrim  from  the  Holy  Land,  re- 
turned to  his  native  country  (probably  mediaeval  France), 


68  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

and  a  peasant  or  yeoman  belonging  to  the  estate  of  a  certain 
Queen.  We  may  suspect,  however,  from  the  conversation, 
that  the  pilgrim  is  a  knight  or  noble,  and  probably  has  been 
a  crusader.  He  sees  that  the  country  has  been  ravaged  by 
some  merciless  enemy ;  and  the  peasant  tells  him  that  it  was 
Duke  Luke.  The  peasant's  house  is  burning;  he  himself 
is  hiding  in  terror  of  his  life.  But  the  pilgrim  is  not  afraid, 
and  goes  to  see  the  Queen  in  spite  of  all  warning.  One  can 
imagine  very  well  that  the  purpose  of  the  Duke  in  thus 
making  war  upon  a  woman  was  to  force  a  marriage  as  well 
as  to  acquire  territory.  Now  it  was  the  duty  of  a  true 
knight  to  help  any  woman  unjustly  oppressed  or  attacked; 
therefore  the  pilgrim's  wish  to  see  the  Queen  is  prompted 
by  this  sense  of  duty.  Hereafter  the  poem  has  an  entirely 
different  tone. 

The  Queen  sat  idle  by  her  loom : 

She  heard  the  arras  stir, 
And  looked  up  sadly :  through  the  room 

The  sweetness  sickened  her 
Of  musk  and  myrrh. 

Her  women,  standing  two  and  two, 

In  silence  combed  the  fleece. 
The  Pilgrim  said,  "Peace  be  with  you, 

Lady" ;  and  bent  his  knees. 

She  answered,  "Peace." 

Her  eyes  were  like  the  wave  within; 

Like  water-reeds  the  poise 
Of  her  soft  body,  dainty-thin ; 

And  like  the  water's  noise 
Her  plaintive  voice. 

The  naked  walls  of  rooms  during  the  Middle  Ages  were 
covered  with  drapery  or  tapestry,  on  which  figures  were 
embroidered  or  woven.  Arras  was  the  name  given  to  a 
kind  of  tapestry  made  at  the  town  of  Arras  in  France. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  69 

For  him,  the  stream  had  never  well'd 

In  desert  tracts  malign 
So  sweet ;  nor  had  he  ever  felt 

So  faint  in  the  sunshine 
Of  Palestine. 

Right  so,  he  knew  that  he  saw  weep 

Each  night  through  every  dream 
The  Queen's  own  face,  confused  in  sleep 

With  visages  supreme 

Not  known  to  him. 

At  this  point  the  poem  suddenly  becomes  mystical.  It 
is  not  chance  nor  will  that  has  brought  these  two  together, 
but  some  divine  destiny.  As  he  sees  the  Queen's  face  for 
the  first  time  with  his  eyes,  he  remembers  having  seen  the 
same  face  many  times  before  in  his  dreams.  And  when  he 
saw  it  in  dreams,  it  was  also  the  face  of  a  woman  weeping; 
and  there  were  also  other  faces  in  the  dream,  not  human 
but  "supreme" — probably  angels  or  other  heavenly  beings. 

"Lady,"  he  said,  "your  lands  lie  burnt 

And  waste :  to  meet  your  foe 
All  fear :  this  I  have  seen  and  learnt. 

Say  that  it  shall  be  so. 
And  I  will  go." 

She  gazed  at  him.     "Your  cause  is  just. 

For  I  have  heard  the  same :" 
He  said:     "God's  strength  shall  be  my  trust. 

Fall  it  to  good  or  grame, 
'Tis  in  His  name." 

"Sir,  you  are  thanked.     My  cause  is  dead. 

Why  should  you  toil  to  break 
A  grave,  and  fall  therein?"  she  said. 

He  did  not  pause  but  spake: 
"For  my  vow's  sake." 

"Can  such  vows  be.  Sir — to  God's  ear, 
Not  to  God's  will  ?"     "My  vow 


70  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Remains :  God  heard  me  there  as  here," 
He  said,  with  reverent  brow, 
"Both  then  and  now." 

They  gazed  together,  he  and  she, 

The  minute  while  he  spoke ; 
And  when  he  ceased,  she  suddenly 

Looked  round  upon  her  folk 
As  though  she  woke. 

"Fight,  Sir,"  she  said ;  "my  prayers  in  pain 

Shall  be  your  fellowship." 
He  whispered  one  among  her  train, — 

"To-morrow  bid  her  keep 

This  staff  and  scrip." 

The  scrip  was  a  kind  of  wallet  or  bag  carried  by  pil- 
grims. Now  we  have  a  few  sensuous  touches,  of  the  kind 
in  which  Rossetti  excels  all  other  poets,  because  they  always 
are  kept  within  the  extreme  limits  of  artistic  taste. 

She  sent  him  a  sharp  sword,  whose  belt 

About  his  body  there 
As  sweet  as  her  own  arms  he  felt. 

He  kissed  its  blade,  all  bare. 
Instead  of  her. 

She  sent  him  a  green  banner  wrought 

With  one  white  lily  stem, 
To  bind  his  lance  with  when  he  fought. 

He  writ  upon  the  same 

And  kissed  her  name. 

"Wrought"  here  signifies  embroidered  with  the  design 
of  the  white  lily.  Remember  that  the  Queen's  name  is 
white  lily  (Blanchelys),  and  the  flower  is  her  crest.  It  was 
the  custom  for  every  knight  to  have  fastened  to  his  lance  a 
small  flag  or  pennon — also  called  sometimes  "pennant." 

She  sent  him  a  white  shield,  whereon 
She  bade  that  he  should  trace 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  71 

His  will.     He  blent  fair  hues  that  shone. 
And  in  a  golden  space 

He  kissed  her  face. 

Being  appointed  by  the  Queen  her  knight,  it  would  have 
been  more  customary  that  she  should  tell  him  what  design 
he  should  put  upon  his  shield — heraldic  privileges  coming 
from  the  sovereign  only.  But  she  tells  him  generously 
that  he  may  choose  any  design  that  he  pleases.  He  returns 
the  courtesy  very  beautifully  by  painting  the  Queen's  face 
on  the  shield  upon  a  background  of  gold,  and  kissing  the 
image.  By  "space"  here  must  be  understood  a  quarter,  or 
compartment,  of  the  shield,  according  to  the  rules  of  her- 
aldry. 

Born  of  the  day  that  died,  that  eve 

Now  dying  sank  to  rest; 
As  he,  in  likewise  taking  leave, 

Once  with  a  heaving  breast 
Looked  to  the  west. 

And  there  the  sunset  skies  unseal'd, 

Like  lands  he  never  knew, 
Beyond  to-morrow's  battle-field 

Lay  open  out  of  view 
To  ride  into. 

Here  we  have  the  suggestion  of  emotions  known  to  us 
all,  when  looking  into  a  beautiful  sunset  sky  in  which  there 
appeared  to  be  landscapes  of  gold  and  purple  and  other 
wonderful  colours,  like  some  glimpse  of  a  heavenly  world. 
Notice  the  double  suggestion  of  this  verse.  The  knight, 
having  bidden  the  Queen  good-bye,  is  riding  home,  looking, 
as  he  rides,  into  the  sunset  and  over  the  same  plain  where 
he  must  fight  to-morrow.  Looking,  he  sees  such  landscapes 
— strangely  beautiful,  more  beautiful  than  anything  in  the 
real  world.  Then  he  thinks  that  heaven  might  be  like 
that.     At  the  same  time  he  has  a  premonition  that  he  is 


7a  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

going  to  be  killed  the  next  day,  and  this  thought  comes  to 
him:     "Perhaps  I  shall  ride  into  that  heaven  to-morrow." 

Next  day  till  dark  the  women  pray'd; 

Nor  any  might  know  there 
How  the  fight  went;  the  Queen  has  bade 

That  there  do  come  to  her 
No  messenger. 

The  Queen  is  pale,  her  maidens  ail; 

And  to  the  organ-tones 
They  sing  but  faintly,  who  sang  well 

The  matin-orisons, 

The  lauds  and  nones. 

Orison  means  a  prayer;  matin  has  the  same  meaning  as 
the  French  word,  spelled  in  the  same  way,  for  morning. 
Matin-orisons  are  morning  prayers,  but  special  prayers  be- 
longing to  the  ancient  church  services  are  intended;  these 
prayers  are  still  called  matins.  Lauds  is  also  the  name  of 
special  prayers  of  the  Roman  morning  service;  the  word 
properly  means  "praises."  Nones  is  the  name  of  a  third 
special  kind  of  prayers,  intended  to  be  repeated  or  sung  at 
the  ninth  hour  of  the  morning — ^hence  nones. 

Lo,  Father,  is  thine  ear  inclin'd, 

And  hath  thine  angel  pass'd? 
For  these  thy  watchers  now  are  blind 

With  vigil,  and  at  last 
Dizzy  with  fast. 

Weak  now  to  them  the  voice  o'  the  priest 

As  any  trance  affords ; 
And  when  each  anthem  failed  and  ceas'd, 

It  seemed  that  the  last  chords 
Still  sang  the  words. 

By  Father  is  here  meant  God — probably  in  the  person 
of  Christ.  To  incline  the  ear  means  to  listen.  When  this 
expression  is  used  of  God   it  always  means  listening  to 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  73 

prayer.  In  the  second  line  angel  has  the  double  significa- 
tion of  spirit  and  messenger,  but  especially  the  latter. 
Why  is  the  expression  "at  last"  used  here*?  It  was  the 
custom  when  making  special  prayer  both  to  remain  without 
sleep,  which  was  called  "keeping  vigil"  or  watch,  and  to 
remain  without  food,  or  "to  fast."  The  evening  has  come 
and  the  women  have  not  eaten  anything  all  day.  .  At  first 
they  were  too  anxious  to  feel  hungry,  but  at  last  as  the  night 
advances,  they  become  too  weak. 

"Oh,  what  is  the  light  that  shines  so  red? 

'Tis  long  since  the  sun  set" ; 
Quoth  the  youngest  to  the  eldest  maid: 

"  'Twas  dim  but  now,  and  yet 
The  light  is  great." 

Quoth  the  other :     "  'Tis  our  sight  is  dazed 

That  we  see  flame  i'  the  air." 
But  the  Queen  held  her  brows  and  gazed, 

And  said,  "It  is  the  glare 
Of  torches  there." 

Held  her  brows — that  is,  put  her  hand  above  her  eyes 
so  as  to  see  better  by  keeping  off  the  light  in  the  room. 
There  is  a  very  nice  suggestion  here;  the  Queen  hears  and 
sees  better  than  the  young  girls,  not  simply  because  she  has 
finer  senses,  or  because  she  has  more  to  fear  by  the  loss  of 
her  kingdom.  It  is  the  intensification  of  the  senses  caused 
by  love  that  makes  her  see  and  hear  so  well. 

"Oh  what  are  the  sounds  that  rise  and  spread? 

All  day  it  was  so  still" ; 
Quoth  the  youngest  to  the  eldest  maid: 

"Unto  the  furthest  hill 
The  air  they  fill." 

Quoth  the  other :     "  'Tis  our  sense  is  blurr'd 

With  all  the  chants  gone  by." 
But  the  Queen  held  her  breath  and  heard, 

And  said,  "It  is  the  cry 
Of  Victory." 


74.  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

The  first  of  all  the  rout  was  sound, 

The  next  were  dust  and  flame, 
And  then  the  horses  shook  the  ground; 

And  in  the  thick  of  them 
A  still  band  came. 

I  think  that  no  poet  in  the  world  ever  performed  a 
greater  feat  than  this  stanza,  in  which,  and  in  three  lines 
only,  the  whole  effect  of  the  spectacle  and  sound  of  an  army 
returning  at  night  has  been  given.  We  must  suppose  that 
the  women  have  gone  out  to  wait  for  the  army.  It  comes ; 
but  the  night  is  dark,  and  they  hear  at  first  only  the  sound 
of  the  coming,  the  tramp  of  black  masses  of  men  passing. 
Probably  these  would  be  the  light  troops,  archers  and  foot- 
men. The  lights  are  still  behind,  with  the  cavalry.  Then 
the  first  appearance  is  made  in  the  light  of  torches — foot 
soldiers  still,  covered  with  dust  and  carrying  lights  with 
them.  Then  they  feel  the  ground  shake  under  the  weight 
of  the  feudal  cavalry — the  knights  come.  But  where  is 
the  chief?  No  chief  is  visible;  but,  surrounded  by  the 
mounted  knights,  there  is  a  silent  company  of  men  on  foot 
carrying  something.  The  Queen  wants  to  know  what  it 
is.  It  is  covered  with  leaves  and  branches  so  that  she  can- 
not see  it. 

"Oh  what  do  ye  bring  out  of  the  fight. 

Thus  hid  beneath  these  boughs*?" 
"Thy  conquering  guest  returns  to-night. 

And  yet  shall  not  carouse, 

Queen,  in  thy  house." 

After  a  victory  there  was  always  in  those  days  a  great 
feast  of  wine-drinking,  or  carousal,  l^o  carouse  means  to 
take  part  in  such  noisy  festivity.  When  the  Queen  puts 
her  question,  she  is  kindly  but  grimly  answered,  so  that  she 
knows  the  dead  body  of  her  knight  must  be  under  the 
branches.  But  being  a  true  woman  and  lover,  her  love 
conquers  her  fear  and  pain ;  she  must  see  him  again,  no  mat- 
ter how  horribly  his  body  may  have  been  wounded. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  75 

"Uncover  ye  his  face,"  she  said. 

"O  changed  in  little  space !" 
She  cried,  "O  pale  that  was  so  red  I 

O  God,  O  God  of  grace ! 
Cover  his  face!" 

His  sword  was  broken  in  his  hand 

Where  he  had  kissed  the  blade. 
"O  soft  steel  that  could  not  withstand! 

O  my  hard  heart  unstayed, 

That  prayed  and  prayed  I" 

Why  does  she  call  her  heart  hard'?  Because  she  natu- 
rally reproaches  herself  with  his  death.  Unstayed  means 
uncomforted,  unsupported.  There  is  a  suggestion  that  she 
prayed  and  prayed  in  vain  because  her  heart  had  suffered 
her  to  send  that  man  to  battle. 

His  bloodied  banner  crossed  his  mouth 

Where  he  had  kissed  her  name. 
"O  east,  and  west,  and  north,  and  south, 

Fair  flew  my  web,  for  shame. 

To  guide  Death's  aim!" 

The  tints  were  shredded  from  his  shield 

Where  he  had  kissed  her  face. 
"Oh,  of  all  gifts  that  I  could  yield. 

Death  only  keeps  its  place. 
My  gift  and  grace!" 

The  expression  ''tny  web"  implies  that  the  Queen  had  her- 
self woven  the  material  of  the  flag.  The  word  "web"  is 
not  now  often  used  in  modern  prose  in  this  sense — we  say 
texture,  stuff,  material  instead.  A  shred  especially  means 
a  small  torn  piece.  "To  shred  from"  would  therefore  mean 
to  remove  in  small  torn  pieces — or,  more  simply  expressed, 
to  scratch  off,  or  rend  away.  Of  course  the  rich  thick  paint- 
ing upon  the  shield  is  referred  to.  Repeated  blows  upon 
the  surface  would  remove  the  painting  in  small  shreds. 
This  is  very  pathetic  when  rightly  studied.     She  sees  that 


76  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

all  the  presents  she  made  to  him,  banner,  sword,  shield,  have 
been  destroyed  in  the  battle;  and  with  bitter  irony,  the  irony 
of  grief,  she  exclaims,  "The  only  present  I  made  him  that 
could  not  be  taken  back  or  broken  was  death.  Death  was 
my  grace,  my  one  kindness!" 

Then  stepped  a  damsel  to  her  side, 

And  spoke,  and  needs  must  weep; 
"For  his  sake,  lady,  if  he  died, 

He  prayed  of  thee  to  keep 

This  staff  and  scrip." 

That  night  they  hung  above  her  bed, 

Till  morning  wet  with  tears. 
Year  after  year  above  her  head 

Her  bed  his  token  wears, 

Five  years,  ten  years. 

That  night  the  passion  of  her  grief 

Shook  them  as  there  they  hung 
Each  year  the  wind  that  shed  the  leaf 

Shook  them  and  in  its  tongue 
A  message  flung. 

We  must  suppose  the  Queen's  bed  to  have  been  one  of 
the  great  beds  used  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  long  after- 
wards, with  four  great  pillars  supporting  a  kind  of  little 
roof  or  ceiling  above  it,  and  also  supporting  curtains,  which 
would  be  drawn  around  the  bed  at  night.  The  staff  and 
scrip  and  the  token  would  have  been  hung  to  the  ceiling, 
or  as  the  French  call  it  del,  of  the  bed;  and  therefore  they 
might  be  shaken  by  a  passion  of  grief — because  a  woman 
sobbing  in  the  bed  would  shake  the  bed,  and  therefore  any- 
thing hung  to  the  awning  above  it. 

And  once  she  woke  with  a  clear  mind 

That  letters  writ  to  calm 
Her  soul  lay  in  the  scrip ;  to  find 

Only  a  torpid  balm 

And  dust  of  palm. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  77 

Sometimes  when  we  are  very  unhappy,  we  dream  that 
what  we  really  wish  for  has  happened,  and  that  the  sorrow 
is  taken  away.  And  in  such  dreams  we  are  very  sure  that 
what  we  were  dreaming  is  true.  Then  we  wake  up  to  find 
the  misery  come  back  again.  The  Queen  has  been  greatly 
sorrowing  for  this  man,  and  wishing  she  could  have  some 
news  from  his  spirit,  some  message  from  him.  One  night 
she  dreams  that  somebody  tells  her,  "If  you  will  open  that 
scrip,  you  will  find  in  it  the  message  which  you  want." 
Then  she  wakes  up  and  finds  only  some  palm-dust,  and 
some  balm  so  old  that  it  no  longer  has  any  perfume — but 
no  letter. 

They  shook  far  off  with  palace  sport 

When  joust  and  dance  were  rife ; 
And  the  hunt  shook  them  from  the  court; 

For  hers,  in  peace  or  strife, 
Was  a  Queen's  life. 

A  Queen's  death  now :  as  now  they  shake 

To  gusts  in  chapel  dim, — 
Hung  where  she  sleeps,  not  seen  to  wake 

(Carved  lovely  white  and  slim), 
With  them  by  him. 

It  would  be  for  her,  as  for  any  one  in  great  sorrow,  a 
consolation  to  be  alone  with  her  grief.  But  this  she  cannot 
be,  nor  can  she  show  her  grief  to  any  one,  because  she  is  a 
Queen.  Only  when  in  her  chamber,  at  certain  moments, 
can  she  think  of  the  dead  knight,  and  see  the  staff  and  scrip 
shaking  in  their  place,  as  the  castle  itself  shakes  to  the  sound 
of  the  tournaments,  dances,  and  the  gathering  of  the  great 
hunting  parties  in  the  court  below. 

In  that  age  it  was  the  custom  when  a  knight  died  to  carve 
an  image  of  him,  lying  asleep  in  his  armour,  and  this  image 
was  laid  upon  his  long  tomb.  When  his  wife  died,  or  the 
lady  to  whom  he  had  been  pledged,  she  was  represented  as 
lying  beside  him,  with  her  hands  joined,  as  if  in  prayer. 


78  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

You  will  see  plenty  of  these  figures  upon  old  tombs  in  Eng- 
land. Usually  a  nobleman  was  not  buried  in  the  main 
body  of  a  large  church,  but  in  a  chapel — which  is  a  kind 
of  little  side-church,  opening  into  the  great  church.  Such 
is  the  case  in  many  cathedrals;  and  some  cathedrals,  like 
Westminster,  have  many  chapels  used  as  places  of  burial 
and  places  of  worship.  On  the  altar  in  these  little  chapels 
special  services  are  performed  for  the  souls  of  the  dead 
buried  in  the  chapel.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  see,  in  such 
a  chapel,  some  relics  of  the  dead  suspended  to  the  wall,  such 
as  a  shield  or  a  flag.  In  this  poem,  by  the  Queen's  own 
wish,  the  staff  and  scrip  of  the  dead  knight  are  hung  on 
the  wall  above  her  tomb,  where  they  are  sometimes  shaken 
by  the  wind. 

Stand  up  to-day,  still  armed,  with  her. 

Good  knight,  before  His  brow 
Who  then  as  now  was  here  and  there, 

Who  had  in  mind  thy  vow 
Then  even  as  now. 

The  lists  are  set  in  Heaven  to-day, 

The  bright  pavilions  shine ; 
Fair  hangs  thy  shield,  and  none  gainsay ; 

The  trumpets  sound  in  sign 
That  she  is  thine. 

Not  tithed  with  days'  and  years'  decease 

He  pays  thy  wage  He  owed, 
But  with  imperishable  peace 

Here  in  His  own  abode. 
Thy  jealous  God. 

Still  armed  refers  to  the  representation  of  the  dead  knight 
in  full  armour.  Mediaeval  faith  imagined  the  warrior 
armed  in  the  spiritual  world  as  he  was  in  this  life;  and  the 
ghosts  of  dead  knights  used  to  appear  in  armour.  The  gen- 
eral meaning  of  these  stanzas  is,  "God  now  gives  you  the 
reward  which  he  owed  to  you;  and  unlike  rewards  given 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  79 

to  men  in  this  world,  your  heavenly  reward  is  not  dimin- 
ished by  the  certainty  that  you  cannot  enjoy  it  except  for 
a  certain  number  of  days  or  years.  God  does  not  keep  any- 
thing back  out  of  his  servants'  wages — no  tithe  or  tenth. 
You  will  be  with  her  forever."  The  adjective  "jealous" 
applied  to  God  is  a  Hebrew  use  of  the  term;  but  it  has 
here  a  slightly  different  meaning.  The  idea  is  this,  that 
Heaven  is  jealous  of  human  love  when  human  love  alone 
is  a  motive  of  duty.  Therefore  the  reward  of  duty  need 
not  be  expected  in  this  world  but  only  in  Heaven. 

Outside  of  the  sonnets,  which  we  must  consider  sepa- 
rately, I  do  not  know  any  more  beautiful  example  of  the 
mystical  feeling  of  love  in  Rossetti  than  this.  It  will  not 
be  necessary  to  search  any  further  for  examples  in  this  spe- 
cial direction ;  I  think  you  will  now  perfectly  understand 
one  of  the  peculiar  qualities  distinguishing  Rossetti  from 
all  the  other  Victorian  poets — the  mingling  of  religious 
with  amatory  emotion  in  the  highest  form  of  which  the 
language  is  capable. 

Ill 

While  we  are  discussing  the  ballads  and  shorter  narrative 
poems,  let  us  now  consider  Rossetti  simply  as  a  story-teller, 
and  see  how  wonderful  he  is  in  some  of  those  lighter  pro- 
ductions in  which  he  brought  the  art  of  the  refrain  to  a 
perfection  which  nobody  else,  except  perhaps  Swinburne, 
has  equalled.  Among  the  ballads  there  is  but  one,  "Strat- 
ton  Water,"  conceived  altogether  after  the  old  English 
fashion;  and  this  has  no  refrain.  I  do  not  know  that  any 
higher  praise  can  be  given  to  it  than  the  simple  statement 
that  it  is  a  perfect  imitation  of  the  old  ballad — at  least  so 
far  as  perfect  imitation  is  possible  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Should  there  be  any  criticism  allowable,  it  could  be 
only  this,  that  the  tenderness  and  pathos  are  somewhat 
deeper,  and  somewhat  less  rough  in  utterance,  than  we  ex- 


80  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

pect  in  a  ballad  of  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  century. 
Yet  there  is  no  stanza  in  it  for  which  some  parallel  might 
not  be  found  in  ballads  of  the  old  time.  It  is  nothing  more 
than  the  story  of  a  country  girl  seduced  by  a  nobleman, 
who  nevertheless  has  no  intention  of  being  cruel  or  un- 
faithful. Just  as  she  is  about  to  drown  herself,  or  rather 
to  let  herself  be  drowned,  he  rescues  her  from  the  danger, 
marries  her  in  haste  to  save  appearances,  and  makes  her  his 
wife.  There  is  nothing  more  of  narrative,  and  no  narra- 
tive could  be  more  simple.  But  as  the  great  pains  and 
great  joys  of  life  are  really  in  simple  things,  the  simplest  is 
capable  of  almost  infinite  expansion  when  handled  by  a  true 
artist.  Certainly  in  English  poetry  there  is  no  ballad  more 
beautiful  than  this;  nor  can  we  imagine  it  possible  to  do 
anything  more  with  so  slight  a  theme.  It  contains  noth- 
ing, however,  calling  for  elaborate  explanation  or  comn\ent; 
I  need  only  recommend  you  to  read  it  and  to  feel  it. 

It  is  otherwise  in  the  case  of  such  ballads  as  "Sister 
Helen"  and  "The  White  Ship."  "The  White  Ship"  is  a 
little  too  long  for  full  reproduction  in  the  lecture;  but  we 
can  point  out  its  special  beauties.  "Sister  Helen,"  al- 
though rather  long  also,  we  must  study  the  whole  of,  partly 
because  it  has  become  so  very  famous,  and  partly  because 
it  deals  with  emotions  and  facts  of  the  Middle  Ages  re- 
quiring careful  interpretation.  Perhaps  it  is  the  best  ex- 
ample of  story  telling  in  the  shorter  pieces  of  Rossetti — not 
because  its  pictures  are  more  objectively  vivid  than  the 
themes  of  the  "White  Ship,"  but  because  it  is  more  sub- 
jectively vivid,  dealing  with  the  extremes  of  human  passion, 
hate,  love,  revenge,  and  religious  despair.  All  these  are 
passions  peculiarly  coloured  by  the  age  in  which  the  story 
is  supposed  to  happen,  the  age  of  belief  in  magic,  in  ghosts, 
and  in  hell-fire. 

I  think  that  in  nearly  all  civilised  countries,  East  and 
West,  from  very  old  times  there  has  been  some  belief  in  the 
kind  of  magic  which  this  poem  describes.     I  have  seen  refer- 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  81 

ences  to  similar  magic  in  translations  of  Chinese  books,  and 
I  imagine  that  it  may  have  been  known  in  Japan.  In 
India  it  is  still  practised.  At  one  time  or  other  it  was 
practised  in  every  country  of  Europe.  Indeed,  it  was  only 
the  development  of  exact  science  that  rendered  such  beliefs 
impossible.  During  the  Middle  Ages  they  caused  the  mis- 
ery of  many  thousands  of  lives,  and  the  fear  born  of  them 
weighed  upon  men's  minds  like  a  nightmare. 

This  superstition  in  its  simplest  form  was  that  if  you 
wished  to  kill  a  hated  person,  it  was  only  necessary  to  make 
a  small  statue  or  image  of  that  person  in  wax,  or  some  other 
soft  material,  and  to  place  the  image  before  a  fire,  after 
having  repeated  certain  formulas.  As  the  wax  began  to 
melt  before  the  fire,  the  person  represented  by  the  image 
would  become  sick  and  grow  weaker  and  weaker,  until  with 
the  complete  melting  of  the  image,  he  would  die.  Some- 
times when  the  image  was  made  of  material  other  than  wax, 
it  was  differently  treated.  Also  it  was  a  custom  to  stick 
needles  into  such  images,  for  the  purpose  of  injuring  rather 
than  of  killing.  By  putting  the  needles  into  the  place  of 
the  eyes,  for  example,  the  person  would  be  made  blind;  or 
by  putting  them  into  the  place  of  the  ears,  he  might  be 
rendered  deaf.  A  needle  stuck  into  the  place  of  the  heart 
would  cause  death,  slow  or  quick  according  to  the  slowness 
with  which  the  needle  was  forced  in. 

But  there  were  many  penalties  attaching  to  the  exercise 
of  such  magic.  People  convicted  of  having  practised  it 
were  burned  alive  by  law.  However,  burning  alive  was 
not  the  worst  consequence  of  the  practice,  according  to  gen- 
eral belief;  for  the  church  taught  that  such  a  crime  was 
unpardonable,  and  that  all  guilty  of  it  must  go  to  hell  for 
all  eternity.  You  might  destroy  your  enemy  by  magic,  but 
only  at  the  cost  of  your  own  soul.  A  soul  for  a  life.  And 
you  must  know  that  the  persons  who  did  such  things  be- 
lieved the  magic  was  real,  believed  they  were  killing,  and 
believed  they  were  condemned  to  lose  their  souls  in  conse- 


82  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

quence.  Can  we  conceive  of  hatred  strong  enough  to  satisfy 
itself  at  this  price*?  Certainly,  there  have  been  many  ex- 
amples in  the  history  of  those  courts  in  which  trials  for 
witchcraft  were  formerly  held. 

Now  we  have  the  general  idea  behind  this  awful  ballad. 
The  speakers  in  the  story  are  only  two,  a  young  woman  and 
her  brother,  a  little  boy.  We  may  suppose  the  girl  to  be 
twenty  and  the  boy  about  five  years  old  or  even  younger. 
The  girl  is  apparently  of  good  family,  for  she  appears  to 
be  living  in  a  castle  of  her  own — at  least  a  fortified  dwelling 
of  some  sort.  We  must  also  suppose  her  to  be  an  orphan, 
for  she  avenges  herself — as  one  having  no  male  relative 
to  fight  for  her.  She  has  been  seduced  under  promise  of 
marriage;  but  before  the  marriage  day,  her  faithless  lover 
marries  another  woman.  Then  she  determines  to  destroy 
his  life  by  magic.  While  her  man  of  wax  is  melting  before 
the  fire,  the  parents,  relatives,  and  newly-wedded  bride  of 
her  victim  come  on  horseback  to  beg  that  she  will  forgive. 
But  forgive  she  will  not,  and  he  dies,  and  at  the  last  his 
ghost  actually  enters  the  room.     This  is  the  story. 

You  will  observe  that  the  whole  conversation  is  only  be- 
tween the  girl  and  this  baby-brother.  She  talks  to  the  child 
in  child  language,  but  with  a  terrible  meaning  behind  each 
simple  word.  She  herself  will  not  answer  the  prayers  of 
the  relatives  of  the  dying  man;  she  makes  the  little  brother 
act  as  messenger.  So  all  that  is  said  in  the  poem  is  said  be- 
tween the  girl  and  the  little  boy.  Even  in  the  opening  of 
the  ballad  there  is  a  terrible  pathos  in  the  presence  of  this 
little  baby  brother.  What  does  he  know  of  horrible  be- 
liefs, hatred,  lust,  evil  passion  of  any  sort^  He  only  sees 
that  his  sister  has  made  a  kind  of  wax-doll,  and  he  thinks 
that  it  is  a  pretty  doll,  and  would  like  to  play  with  it.  But 
his  sister,  instead  of  giving  him  the  doll,  begins  to  melt  it 
before  the  fire,  and  he  cannot  understand  why. 

One  more  preliminary  observation.  What  is  the  mean- 
ing of  the  refrain  ■?     This  refrain,  in  italics,  always  repre- 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  83 

sents  the  secret  thought  of  the  girl,  what  she  cannot  say  to 
the  little  brother,  but  what  she  thinks  and  suffers.  The 
references  to  Mary  refer  to  the  Virgin  Mary  of  course,  but 
with  the  special  mediseval  sense.  God  would  not  forgive 
certain  sins;  but,  during  the  Middle  Ages  at  least,  the  Vir- 
gin Mar}^  the  mother  of  God,  was  a  refuge  even  for  the 
despairing  magician  or  witch.  We  could  not  expect  one 
practising  witchcraft  to  call  upon  the  name  of  Christ.  But 
the  same  person,  in  moments  of  intense  pain,  might  very 
naturally  ejaculate  the  name  of  Mat}'.  And  now  we  can 
begin  the  poem. 

SISTER  HELEN 

"Why  did  you  melt  your  waxen  man, 

Sister  Helen?' 
To-day  is  the  third  since  you  began." 
"The  time  was  long,  yet  the  time  ran, 

Little  brother." 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Three  days  to-day,  between  Hell  and  Heaven/) 

"But  if  you  have  done  your  work  aright, 

Sister  Helen, 
You'll  let  me  play,  for  you  said  I  might." 
"Be  very  still  in  your  play  to-night, 

Little   brother." 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Third  night,  to-night,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"You  said  it  must  melt  ere  vesper-bell. 

Sister  Helen ; 
If  now  it  be  molten,  all  Is  well." 
"Even  so, — nay,  peace !  you  cannot  tell. 
Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother! 
0  what  is  this,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"Oh,  the  waxen  knave  was  plump  to-day. 

Sister  Helen ; 
How  like  dead  folk  he  has  dropped  away  !*' 


84.  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

"Nay  now,  of  the  dead  what  can  you  say, 
Little  brother  ?  " 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother/ 
What  of  the  dead,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"See,  see,  the  sunken  pile  of  wood. 

Sister  Helen, 
Shines  through  the  thinned  wax  red  as  blood!" 
"Nay  now,  when  looked  you  yet  on  blood, 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother! 
How  pale  she  is,  between  Hell  and  Heaven/) 

"Now  close  your  eyes,  for  they're  sick  and  sore 

Sister  Helen, 
And  I'll  play  without  the  gallery  door." 
"Aye,  let  me  rest, — I'll  lie  on  the  floor. 

Little  brother." 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother/ 
What  rest  to-night,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"Here  high  up  in  the  balcony. 

Sister  Helen, 
The  moon  flies  face  to  face  with  me." 
"Aye,  look  and  say  whatever  you  see, 

Little  brother," 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother/ 
What  sight  to-night,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"Outside,  it's  merry  in  the  wind's  wake. 

Sister  Helen ; 
In  the  shaken  trees  the  chill  stars  shake." 
"Hush,  heard  you  a  horse-tread  as  you  spake. 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother/ 
What  sound  to-night,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"I  hear  a  horse-tread,  and  I  see. 

Sister  Helen, 
Three  horsemen  that  ride  terribly." 
"Little  brother,  whence  come  the  three, 

Little  brother?" 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  85 

(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother/ 
Whence  should  they  come,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

In  this  last  stanza  the  repetition  of  the  words  "little 
brother"  indicates  intense  eagerness.  The  girl  has  been  ex- 
pecting that  the  result  of  her  enchantments  would  force 
the  relatives  of  her  victim  to  come  and  beg  for  mercy.  The 
child's  words  therefore  bring  to  her  a  shock  of  excitement. 

"They  come  by  the  hill-verge  from  Boyne  Bar, 

Sister  Helen, 
And  one  draws  nigh,  but  two  are  afar." 
"Look,  look,  do  you  know  them  who  they  are, 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Who  should  they  be,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"Oh,  it's  Keith  of  Eastholm  rides  so  fast, 

Sister  Helen, 
For  I  know  the  white  mane  on  the  blast." 
"The  hour  has  come,  has  come  at  last, 

Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Her  hour  at  last,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

Those  who  come  are  knights,  and  the  child  can  know 
them  only  by  the  crest  or  by  the  horses ;  as  they  are  very  far 
he  can  distinguish  only  the  horses,  but  he  knows  the  horse 
of  Keith  of  Eastholm,  because  of  its  white  mane,  floating 
in  the  wind.  From  this  point  the  poem  becomes  very  ter- 
rible, because  it  shows  us  a  play  of  terrible  passion — pas- 
sion all  the  more  terrible  because  it  is  that  of  a  woman. 

"He  has  made  a  sign  and  called  Halloo ! 

Sister  Helen, 
And  he  says  that  he  would  speak  with  you." 
"Oh  tell  him  I  fear  the  frozen  dew 

Little  brother." 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Why  laughs  she  thus,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 


86  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

"The  wind  is  loud,  but  I  hear  him  cry, 

Sister  Helen, 
That  Keith  of  Ewern's  like  to  die." 
"And  he  and  thou,  and  thou  and  I, 

Little  brother." 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
And  they  and  we,  between  Hell  and  Heaven.^ 

"Three  days  ago,  on  his  marriage-morn, 

Sister  Helen, 
He  sickened,  and  lies  since  then  forlorn." 
"For  bridegroom's  side  is  the  bride  a  thorn, 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Cold  bridal  cheer,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!') 

We  now  can  surmise  the  story  from  the  girl's  own  lips. 
There  are  wrongs  that  a  woman  cannot  forgive,  unless  she 
is  of  very  weak  character  indeed.  But  this  woman  is  no 
weakling;  she  can  kill,  and  laugh  while  killing,  because  she 
is  a  daughter  of  warriors,  and  has  been  cruelly  injured. 
Notice  the  bitter  mockery  of  every  word  she  utters,  espe- 
cially the  exulting  reference  to  the  unhappy  bride.  We 
imagine  that  she  might  be  sorry  for  killing  a  man  whom 
she  once  loved;  but  we  may  be  perfectly  sure  that  she  will 
feel  no  pity  for  the  woman  that  he  married. 

"Three  days  and  nights  he  has  lain  abed, 

Sister  Helen, 
And  he  prays  in  torment  to  be  dead." 
"The  thing  may  chance,  if  he  have  prayed. 

Little  brother !" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
If  he  have  prayed,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"But  he  has  not  ceased  to  cry  to-day. 

Sister  Helen, 
That  you  should  take  your  curse  away." 
"My  prayer  was  heard, — he  need  but  pray, 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Shall  God  not  hear,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  87 

"But  he  says  till  you  take  back  your  ban, 

Sister  Helen, 
His  soul  would  pass,  yet  never  can." 
"Nay  then,  shall  I  slay  a  living  man, 

Little  brother?" 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
A  living  soul,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"But  he  calls  for  ever  on  your  name, 

Sister  Helen, 
And  says  that  he  melts  before  a  flame." 
"My  heart  for  his  pleasure  fared  the  same, 

Little  brother." 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother/ 
Fire  at  the  heart,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"Here's  Keith  of  Westholm  riding  fast, 

Sister  Helen, 
For  I  know  the  white  plume  on  the  blast." 
"The  hour,  the  sweet  hour  I  forecast, 
Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Is  the  hour  sweet,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"He  stops  to  speak,  and  he  stills  his  horse. 

Sister  Helen, 
But  his  words  are  drowned  in  the  wind's  course." 
"Nay  hear,  nay  hear,  you  must  hear,  perforce. 

Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother! 
What  word  now  heard,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"Oh,  he  says  that  Keith  of  Ewern's  cry. 

Sister  Helen, 
Is  ever  to  see  you  ere  he  die." 
"In  all  that  his  soul  sees,  there  am  I, 

Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
The  souVs  one  sight,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"He  sends  a  ring  and  a  broken  coin, 

Sister  Helen, 
And  bids  you  mind  the  banks  of  Boyne." 


88  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

"What  else  he  broke  will  he  ever  join," 
Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
No,  never  joined,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

It  was  a  custom,  and  in  some  parts  of  England  still  is 
a  custom,  for  lovers  not  only  to  give  each  other  rings,  but 
also  to  divide  something  between  them — such  as  a  coin  or 
a  ring,  for  pledge  and  remembrance.  Sometimes  a  ring 
would  be  cut  in  two,  and  each  person  would  keep  one-half. 
Sometimes  a  thin  coin,  gold  or  silver  money,  was  broken 
into  halves  and  each  of  the  lovers  would  wear  one-half 
round  the  neck  fastened  to  a  string.  Such  pledges  would 
be  always  recognised,  and  were  only  to  be  sent  back  in  time 
of  terrible  danger — in  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  There 
are  many  references  to  this  custom  in  the  old  ballads. 

"He  yields  you  these,  and  craves  full  fain, 

Sister  Helen, 
You  pardon  him  in  his  mortal  pain." 
"What  else  he  took  will  he  give  again. 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Not  twice  to  give,  between  Hell  and  Heaven/) 

*'He  calls  your  name  in  an  agony, 

Sister  Helen, 
That  even  dead  Love  must  weep  to  see." 
"Hate,  born  of  Love,  is  blind  as  he. 

Little  brother !" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Love  turned  to  hate,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"Oh  it's  Keith  of  Keith  now  that  rides  fast, 

Sister  Helen, 
For  I  know  the  white  hair  on  the  blast." 
"The  short,  short  hour  will  soon  be  past. 

Little  brother!" 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Will  soon  be  past,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  89 

"He  looks  at  me  and  he  tries  to  speak, 

Sister  Helen, 
But  oh!  his  voice  is  sad  and  weak!" 
"What  here  should  the  mighty  Baron  seek, 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Is  this  the  end,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"Oh  his  son  still  cries,  if  you  forgive, 

Sister  Helen, 
The  body  dies,  but  the  soul  shall  live." 
"Fire  shall  forgive  me  as  I  forgive. 

Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
As  she  forgives,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

This  needs  some  explanation  in  reference  to  religious  be- 
lief. The  witch,  you  will  observe,  has  the  power  to  destroy 
the  soul  as  well  as  the  body,  but  on  the  condition  of  suf- 
fering the  same  loss  herself.  Yet  how  can  this  be"?  It 
could  happen  thus:  if  the  dying  man  could  make  a  confes- 
sion before  he  dies,  and  sincerely  repent  of  his  sin  before  a 
priest,  his  soul  might  be  saved;  but  while  he  remains  in  the 
agony  of  suffering  caused  by  the  enchantment,  he  cannot 
repent.  Not  to  repent  means  to  go  to  Hell  for  ever  and 
ever.  If  the  woman  would  forgive  him,  withdrawing  the 
curse  and  pain  for  one  instant,  all  might  be  well.  But  she 
answers,  "Fire  shall  forgive  me  as  I  forgive" — she  means, 
"The  fire  of  Hell  shall  sooner  forgive  me  when  I  go  to 
Hell,  than  I  shall  forgive  him  in  this  world."  There  will 
be  other  references  to  this  horrible  belief  later  on.  It  was 
very  common  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

"Oh  he  prays  you,  as  his  heart  would  rive, 

Sister  Helen, 
To  save  his  dear  son's  soul  alive." 
"Fire  cannot  slay  it,  it  shall  thrive, 

Little  brother !" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Alas,  alas,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 


90  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Rive  is  seldom  used  now  in  prose,  though  we  have  "riven" 
very  often.  To  rive  is  to  tear.  The  last  line  of  this  stanza 
is  savage,  for  it  refers  to  the  belief  that  the  black  fire  of 
Hell  preserves  the  body  of  the  damned  person  instead  of 
consuming  it. 

"He  cries  to  you,  kneeling  in  the  road, 

Sister  Helen, 
To  go  with  him  for  the  love  of  God!" 
"The  way  is  long  to  his  son's  abode. 

Little  brother  I" 
{0  Mother^  Mary  Mother, 
The  way  is  long,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!^ 

"A  lady's  here,  by  a  dark  steed  brought. 

Sister  Helen, 
So  darkly  clad,  I  saw  her  not." 
"See  her  now  or  never  see  aught, 

Little  brother !" 
((?  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
What  more  to  see,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

As  the  horse  was  black  and  the  lady  was  all  dressed  in 
black,  the  child  could  not  at  first  notice  either  in  the  shadows 
of  the  road.  On  announcing  that  he  had  seen  her  at  last, 
the  excitement  of  the  sister  reaches  its  highest  and  wicked- 
est; she  says  to  him,  "Nay,  you  will  never  be  able  to  see 
anything  in  this  world,  unless  you  can  see  that  woman's  face 
and  tell  me  all  about  it."  For  it  is  the  other  woman,  who 
has  made  forgiveness  impossible;  it  is  the  other  woman,  the 
object  of  her  deepest  hate. 

"Her  hood  falls  back,  and  the  moon  shines  fair, 

Sister  Helen, 
On  the  Lady  of  Ewern's  golden  hair." 
"Blest  hour  of  my  power  and  her  despair, 

Little  brother !" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Hour  blessed  and  bannd,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  91 

"Pale,  pale  her  cheeks,  that  in  pride  did  glow, 

Sister  Helen, 
'Neath  the  bridal-wreath  three  days  ago." 
"One  morn  for  pride,  and  three  days  for  woe, 
Little  brother!" 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Three  days,  three  nights,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"Her  clasped  hands  stretch  from  her  bending  head, 

Sister  Helen; 
With  the  loud  wind's  wail  her  sobs  are  wed." 
"What  wedding-strains  hath  her  bridal  bed, 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
What  strain  but  death's,  between  Hell  and  Heaven^) 

You  must  remember  that  the  word  "strains"  is  nearly 
always  used  in  the  sense  of  musical  tones,  and  that  "wed- 
ding-strains" means  the  joyful  music  played  at  a  wedding. 
Thus  the  ferocity  of  Helen's  mockery  becomes  apparent, 
for  it  was  upon  the  bridal  night  that  the  bridegroom  was 
first  bewitched;  and  from  the  moment  of  his  marriage,  there- 
fore, he  has  been  screaming  in  agony. 

The  climax  of  hatred  is  in  the  next  stanza.  After  that 
the  tone  begins  to  reverse,  and  gradually  passes  away  in 
the  melancholy  of  eternal  despair. 

"She  may  not  speak,  she  sinks  in  a  swoon, 

Sister  Helen, — 
She  lifts  her  lips  and  gasps  on  the  moon." 
"Oh  I  might  I  but  hear  her  soul's  blithe  tune. 

Little  brother !" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Her  woe's  dumb  cry,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

To  "gasp"  means  to  open  the  mouth  in  the  effort  to  get 
breath,  as  one  does  in  a  fit  of  hysterics,  or  in  time  of  great 
agony.  "Gasps  on  the  moon"  means  that  she  gasps  with 
her  face  turned  up  toward  the  moon.     In  the  last  line  we 


92  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

have  the  words  "blithe  tune"  used  in  the  same  tone  of  terri- 
ble irony  as  that  with  which  the  words  "wedding  strain"  was 
used  in  the  preceding  stanza.  "Blithe"  means  "merry." 
Helen  is  angry  because  the  other  woman  has  fainted;  hav- 
ing fainted,  she  has  become  for  the  moment  physically  in- 
capable of  suffering.  But  Helen  thinks  that  her  soul  must 
be  conscious  and  suffering  as  much  as  ever;  therefore  she 
wishes  that  she  could  hear  the  suffering  of  the  soul,  since  she 
cannot  longer  hear  the  outcries  of  the  body. 

"They've  caught  her  to  Westholm's  saddle-bow, 

Sister  Helen, 
And  her  moonlit  hair  gleams  white  in  its  flow." 
"Let  it  turn  whiter  than  winter-snow, 

Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Woe-withered  gold,  between  Hell  and  Heaven.') 

The  allusion  is  to  the  physiological  fact  that  intense 
moral  pain,  or  terrible  fear,  sometimes  turns  the  hair  of  a 
young  person  suddenly  white. 

"O  Sister  Helen,  you  heard  the  bell, 

Sister  Helen! 
More  loud  than  the  vesper-chime  it  fell." 
"No  vesper-chime,  but  a  dying  knell, 

Little  brother  I" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
His  dying  knell,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"Alas,  but  I  fear  the  heavy  sound, 

Sister  Helen; 
Is  it  in  the  sky  or  in  the  ground?" 
"Say,  have  they  turned  their  horses  round. 

Little  brother?" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
What  would  she  more,  between  Hell  and  Heaven?) 

"They  have  raised  the  old  man  from  his  knee. 

Sister  Helen, 
And  they  ride  in  silence  hastily." 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  93 

"More  fast  the  naked  soul  doth  flee, 
Little  brother !" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
The  naked  soul,  between  Hell  and  Heaven/) 

"Flank  to  flank  are  the  three  steeds  gone, 

Sister  Helen, 
But  the  lady's  dark  steed  goes  alone." 
"And  lonely  her  bridegroom's  soul  hath  flown, 
Little  brother !" 
(0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
The  lonely  ghost,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"Oh  the  wind  is  sad  in  the  iron  chill. 

Sister  Helen, 
And  weary  sad  they  look  by  the  hill." 
"But  he  and  I  are  sadder  still, 

Little  brother  I" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Most  sad  of  all,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"See,  see,  the  wax  has  dropped  from  its  place. 

Sister  Helen, 
And  the  flames  are  winning  up  apace !" 
"Yet  here  they  burn  but  for  a  space. 

Little  brother  I" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Here  for  a  space,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

"Ah !  what  white  thing  at  the  door  has  cross'd, 

Sister  Helen? 
Ah!  what  is  this  that  sighs  in  the  frost?" 
"A  soul  that's  lost  as  mine  is  lost, 
Little  brother!" 
{0  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Lost,  lost,  all  lost,  between  Hell  and  Heaven!) 

Notice  how  the  action  naturally  dies  off  into  despair. 
From  the  beginning  until  very  nearly  the  close,  we  had  an 
uninterrupted  crescendo,  as  we  should  say  in  music — that 
is,  a  gradual  intensification  of  the  passion  expressed.     With 


94  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

the  stroke  of  the  death-bell  the  passion  subsides.  The  re- 
venge is  satisfied,  the  irreparable  wrong  is  done  to  avenge 
a  wrong,  and  with  the  entrance  of  the  ghost  the  whole  con- 
sequence of  the  act  begins  to  appear  within  the  soul  of  the 
actor.  I  know  of  nothing  more  terrible  in  literature  than 
this  poem,  as  expressing  certain  phases  of  human  feeling, 
and  nothing  more  intensely  true.  The  probability  or  im- 
probability of  the  incidents  is  of  no  more  consequence  than 
is  the  unreality  of  the  witch-belief.  It  is  enough  that  such 
beliefs  once  existed  to  make  us  know  that  the  rest  is  not 
only  possible  but  certain.  For  a  time  we  are  really  sub- 
jected to  the  spell  of  a  mediseval  nightmare. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  above  poem  is  mainly  a  subjective 
study.  As  an  objective  study,  "The  White  Ship"  shows 
us  an  equal  degree  of  power,  appealing  to  the  visual  faculty. 
We  cannot  read  it  all,  nor  is  this  necessary.  A  few  ex- 
amples will  be  sufficient.  This  ballad  is  in  distichs,  and 
has  a  striking  refrain.  The  story  is  founded  upon  historical 
fact.  The  son  and  heir  of  the  English  king  Henry  I,  to- 
gether with  his  sister  and  many  knights  and  ladies,  was 
drowned  on  a  voyage  from  France  to  England,  and  it  is 
said  that  the  king  was  never  again  seen  to  smile  after  he 
had  heard  the  news.  Rossetti  imagines  the  story  told  by 
a  survivor — a  butcher  employed  on  the  ship,  the  lowest 
menial  on  board.  Such  a  man  would  naturally  feel  very 
differently  toward  the  prince  from  others  of  the  train,  and 
would  criticise  him  honestly  from  the  standpoint  of  simple 
morality. 

Eighteen  years  till  then  he  had  seen, 

And  the  devil's  dues  in  him  were  eighteen. 

The  peasant  thus  estimates  the  ruler  who  breaks  the  com- 
mon laws  of  God  and  man.  Nevertheless  he  is  just  in  his 
own  way,  and  can  appreciate  unselfishness  even  in  a  man 
whom  he  hates. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  95 

He  was  a  Prince  of  lust  and  pride ; 

He  showed  no  grace  till  the  hour  he  died. 

God  only  knows  where  his  soul  did  wake, 
But  I  saw  him  die  for  his  sister's  sake. 

It  is  a  simple  mind  of  this  sort  that  can  best  tell  a  tragical 
story;  and  the  butcher's  story  is  about  the  most  perfect 
thing  imaginable  of  its  kind.  Here  also  we  have  one  ad- 
mirable bit  of  subjective  work,  the  narration  of  the  butcher's 
experience  in  the  moment  of  drowning.  I  suppose  you  all 
know  that  when  one  is  just  about  to  die,  or  in  danger  of 
sudden  death,  the  memory  becomes  extraordinarily  vivid, 
and  things  long  forgotten  flash  into  the  mind  as  if  painted 
by  lightning,  together  with  voices  of  the  past. 

I  Berold  was  down  in  the  sea ; 

Passing  strange  though  the  thing  may  be, 

Of  dreams  then  known  I  remember  me. 

Not  dreams  in  the  sense  of  visions  of  sleep,  but  images 
of  memory. 

Blithe  is  the  shout  on  Harfleur's  strand 
When  morning  lights  the  sails  to  land : 

And  blithe  is  Honfleur's  echoing  gloam 
When  mothers  call  the  children  home : 

And  high  do  the  bells  of  Rouen  beat 

When  the  Body  of  Christ  goes  down  the  street. 

These  things  and  the  like  were  heard  and  shown 
In  a  moment's  trance  'neath  the  sea  alone ; 

And  when  I  rose,  'twas  the  sea  did  seem, 
And  not  these  things,  to  be  all  a  dream. 

In  the  moment  after  the  sinking  of  the  ship,  under  the 
water,  the  man  remembers  what  he  most  loved  at  home — 


96  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

mornings  in  a  fishing  village,  seeing  the  ships  return;  eve- 
nings in  a  like  village,  and  the  sound  of  his  own  mother's 
voice  calling  him  home,  as  when  he  was  a  little  child  at 
play ;  then  the  old  Norman  city  that  he  knew  well,  and  the 
church  processions  of  Corpus  Christi  (Body  of  Christ),  the 
great  event  of  the  year  for  the  poorer  classes.  Why  he  re- 
membered such  things  at  such  a  time  he  cannot  say;  it 
seemed  to  him  a  very  ghostly  experience,  but  not  more 
ghostly  than  the  sight  of  the  sea  and  the  moon  when  he 
rose  again. 

The  ship  was  gone  and  the  crowd  was  gone, 
And  the  deep  shuddered  and  the  moon  shone; 

And  in  a  strait  grasp  my  arms  did  span 

The  mainyard  rent  from  the  mast  where  it  ran ; 

And  on  it  with  me  was  another  man. 

Where  lands  were  none  'neath  the  dim  sea-sky, 
We  told  our  names,  that  man  and  I. 

"O  I  am  Godefroy  de  I'Aigle  hight, 
And  son  I  am  to  a  belted  knight." 

"And  I  am  Berold  the  butcher's  son. 
Who  slays  the  beasts  in  Rouen  town." 

The  touch  here,  fine  as  it  is,  is  perfectly  natural.  The  com- 
mon butcher  finds  himself  not  only  for  the  moment  in 
company  with  a  nobleman,  but  able  to  talk  to  him  as  a 
friend.  There  is  no  rank  or  wealth  between  sky  and  sea — 
or,  as  a  Japanese  proverb  says,  "There  is  no  king  on  the  road 
of  death."  The  refrain  of  the  ballad  utters  the  same 
truth : 

Lands  are  swayed  by  a  king  on  a  throne^ 

The  sea  hath  no  King  but  God  alone. 

Both  in  its  realism  and  in  its  emotion  this  ballad  is  a 
great  masterpiece.     It   is  much  superior  to   "The  King's 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  97 

Tragedy,"  also  founded  upon  history.  "The  King's  Trag- 
edy" seems  to  us  a  little  strained;  perhaps  the  poet  at- 
tempted too  much.  I  shall  not  quote  from  it,  but  will  only 
recommend  a  reading  of  it  to  students  of  English  literature 
because  of  its  relation  to  a  very  beautiful  story — the  story 
of  the  courtship  of  James  I  of  Scotland,  and  of  how  he 
came  to  write  his  poem  called  "The  King's  Ouhair." 

Another  ballad  demands  some  attention  and  explanation, 
though  it  is  not  suitable  for  reading  in  the  classroom.  It  is 
an  expression  of  passion — but  not  passion  merely  human; 
rather  superhuman  and  evil.  For  she  who  speaks  in  this 
poem  is  not  a  woman  like  "Sister  Helen" ;  she  is  a  demon. 

Not  a  drop  of  her  blood  was  human, 

But  she  was  made  like  a  soft  sweet  woman. 

Perhaps  the  poet  desired  to  show  us  here  the  extremest 
imaginative  force  of  hate  and  cruelty — not  in  a  mortal  be- 
ing, because  that  would  repel  us,  but  in  an  immortal  being, 
in  whom  such  emotion  can  only  inspire  fear.  Emotionally, 
the  poet's  conception  is  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  the  tradi- 
tion is  incomparably  older;  we  can  trace  it  back  to  ancient 
Assyrian  beliefs.  Coming  to  us  through  Hebrew  literature, 
this  strange  story  has  inspired  numberless  European  poets 
and  painters,  besides  the  author  of  "Eden  Bower."  You 
should  know  the  stoiy,  because  you  will  find  a  great  many 
references  to  it  in  the  different  literatures  of  Europe. 

Briefly,  Lilith  is  the  name  of  an  evil  spirit  believed  by 
the  ancient  Jews  and  by  other  Oriental  nations  to  cause 
nightmare.  But  she  did  other  things  much  more  evil,  and 
there  were  curious  legends  about  her.  The  Jews  said  that 
before  the  first  woman,  Eve,  was  created,  Adam  had  a 
demon  wife  by  whom  he  became  the  father  of  many  evil 
spirits.  When  Eve  was  created  and  given  to  him  in  mar- 
riage, Lilith  was  necessarily  jealous,  and  resolved  to  avenge 
herself  upon  the  whole  human  race.  It  is  even  to-day  the 
custom  among  Jews  to  make  a  charm  against  Lilith  on  their 


98  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

marriage  night ;  for  Lilith  is  especially  the  enemy  of  brides. 

But  the  particular  story  about  Lilith  that  mostly  figures 
in  poetry  and  painting  is  this:  If  any  young  man  sees 
Lilith,  he  must  at  once  fall  in  love  with  her,  because  she  is 
much  more  beautiful  than  any  human  being;  and  if  he  falls 
in  love  with  her,  he  dies.  After  his  death,  if  his  body  is 
opened  by  the  doctors,  it  will  be  found  that  a  long  golden 
hair,  one  strand  of  woman's  hair,  is  fastened  round  his  heart. 
The  particular  evil  in  which  Lilith  delights  is  the  destruc- 
tion of  youth. 

In  Rossetti's  poem  Lilith  is  represented  only  as  declaring 
to  her  demon  lover,  the  Serpent,  how  she  will  avenge  her- 
self upon  Adam  and  upon  Eve.  The  ideas  are  in  one  way 
extremely  interesting;  they  represent  the  most  tragical  and 
terrible  form  of  jealousy — that  jealousy  written  of  in  the 
Bible  as  being  like  the  very  fires  of  Hell.  We  might  say 
that  in  Victorian  verse  this  is  the  unique  poem  of  jealousy, 
in  a  female  personification.  For  the  male  personification 
we  must  go  to  Robert  Browning. 

But  there  is  a  masterly  phase  of  jealousy  described  in 
one  of  Rossetti's  modern  poems,  "A  Last  Confession." 
Here,  however,  the  jealousy  is  of  the  kind  with  which  we 
can  humanly  sympathise ;  there  is  nothing  monstrous  or  dis- 
torted about  it.  The  man  has  reason  to  suspect  unchastity, 
and  he  kills  the  woman  on  the  instant.  I  should,  therefore, 
consider  this  poem  rather  as  a  simple  and  natural  tragedy 
than  as  a  study  of  jealousy.  It  is  to  be  remarked  here  that 
Rossetti  did  not  confine  himself  to  mediseval  or  supernatural 
subjects.  Three  of  his  very  best  poems  are  purely  modern, 
belonging  to  the  nineteenth  century.  This  "Last  Confes- 
sion," appropriately  placed  in  Italy,  is  not  the  most  remark- 
able of  the  three,  but  it  is  very  fine.  I  do  not  know  any- 
thing in  even  French  literature  to  be  compared  with  the 
pathos  of  the  murder  scene,  unless  it  be  the  terrible  closing 
chapter  of  Prosper  Merimee's  "Carmen."  The  story  of 
"Carmen"  is  also  a  confession ;  but  there  is  a  great  difference 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  99 

in  the  history  of  the  tragedies.  Carmen's  lover  does  not 
kill  in  a  moment  of  passion.  He  kills  only  after  having 
done  everything  that  a  man  could  do  in  order  to  avoid  kill- 
ing. He  argues,  prays,  goes  on  his  knees  in  supplication — 
ail  in  vain.  And  then  we  know  that  he  must  kill,  that  any 
man  in  the  same  terrible  situation  must  kill.  He  stabs  her; 
then  the  two  continue  to  look  at  each  other — she  keeping 
her  large  black  eyes  fixed  on  the  face  of  her  murderer,  till 
suddenly  they  close,  and  she  falls.  No  simpler  fact  could 
occur  in  the  history  of  an  assassination ;  yet  how  marvellous 
the  power  of  that  simple  fact  as  the  artist  tells  it.  We 
always  see  those  eyes.  In  the  case  of  Rossetti's  murderer, 
the  incidents  of  the  tragedy  differ  somewhat,  because  he 
is  blind  with  passion  at  the  moment  that  he  strikes,  and 
does  not  see.  When  his  vision  clears  again,  he  sees  the 
girl  fall,  and 

— her  stiff  bodice  scooped  the  sand 
Into  her  bosom. 

As  long  as  he  lived,  he  always  saw  that — the  low  stiff  front 
of  the  girl's  dress  with  the  sand  and  blood.  In  its  way  this 
description  is  quite  as  terrible  as  the  last  chapter  of  "Car- 
men" ;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  which  victim  of  pas- 
sion most  excites  our  sympathies.  The  other  two  poems  of 
modern  life  to  which  I  have  referred  are  "The  Card-Dealer" 
and  "Jenny."  "The  Card-Dealer"  represents  a  singular 
faculty  on  the  poet's  part  of  seeing  ordinary  facts  in  their 
largest  relations.  In  many  European  gambling  houses  of 
celebrity,  the  cards  used  are  dealt — that  is,  given  to  the 
players — by  a  beautiful  woman,  usually  a  woman  not  of 
the  virtuous  kind.  The  poet,  entering  such  a  place,  watches 
the  game  for  a  time  in  silence,  and  utters  his  artistic  admira- 
tion of  the  beauty  of  the  card-dealer,  merely  as  he  would 
admire  a  costly  picture  or  a  statue  of  gold.  Then  suddenly 
comes  to  him  the  thought  that  this  woman,  and  the  silent 
players,   and  the  game,   are  but  symbols  of  eternal  fact. 


100  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

The  game  is  no  longer  to  his  eyes  a  mere  game  of  cards ;  it 
is  the  terrible  game  of  Life,  the  struggle  for  wealth  and 
vain  pleasures.  The  woman  is  no  longer  a  woman,  but 
Fate;  she  plays  the  game  of  Death  against  Life,  and  those 
who  play  with  her  must  lose.  However,  the  allusions  in 
this  poem  would  require  for  easy  understanding  considera- 
ble familiarity  with  the  terms  of  card-play  and  the  names 
of  the  cards.  If  you  know  these,  I  think  you  will  find  this 
poem  a  very  solemn  and  beautiful  composition. 

Much  more  modern  is  "Jenny,"  a  poem  which  greatly 
startled  the  public  when  it  was  first  published.  People 
were  inclined  for  the  moment  to  be  shocked;  then  they 
studied  and  admired;  finally  they  praised  unlimitedly,  and 
the  poem  deserved  all  praise.  But  the  subject  was  a  very 
daring  one  to  put  before  a  public  so  prudish  as  the  English. 
For  Jenny  is  a  prostitute.  Nevertheless  the  prudish  public 
gladly  accepted  this  wonderful  psychological  study,  which 
no  other  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century,  except  perhaps 
Browning,  could  have  attempted. 

The  plan  of  the  poem  is  as  follows :  A  young  man,  per- 
haps the  poet  himself,  finds  at  some  public  place  of  pleasure 
a  woman  of  the  town  who  pleases  him,  and  he  accompanies 
her  to  her  residence.  Although  the  young  man  is  perhaps 
imprudent  in  seeking  the  company  of  such  a  person,  he  is 
only  doing  what  tens  of  thousands  of  young  men  are  apt 
to  do  without  thinking.  He  represents,  we  might  say, 
youth  in  general.  But  there  is  a  difference  between  him 
and  the  average  youth  in  one  respect — he  thinks.  On 
reaching  the  girl's  room,  he  is  already  in  a  thoughtful  mood; 
and  when  she  falls  asleep  upon  his  knees,  tired  with  the 
dancing  and  banqueting  of  the  evening,  he  does  not  think 
of  awakening  her.  He  begins  to  meditate.  He  looks 
about  the  room  and  notices  the  various  objects  in  it,  simple 
enough  in  themselves,  but  strangely  significant  by  their  re- 
lation to  such  a  time  and  place — a  vase  of  flowers,  a  little 
clock  ticking,  a  bird  in  a  cage.     The  flowers  make  him  think 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  lOl 

of  the  symbolism  of  flowers — lilies  they  are,  but  faded. 
Lilies,  the  symbol  of  purity,  in  Jenny's  room  I  But  once 
she  herself  was  a  lily — now  also  morally  faded.  Then  the 
clock,  ticking  out  its  minutes,  hours — what  strange  hours  it 
has  ticked  out  I  He  looks  at  the  sleeping  girl  again,  but 
with  infinite  pity.  She  dreams;  what  is  she  dreaming  of'? 
To  wake  her  would  be  cruel,  for  in  the  interval  of  sleep 
she  forgets  all  the  sorrows  of  the  world.     He  thinks: 

For  sometimes,  were  the  truth  confess'd, 
You're  thankful  for  a  little   rest, — 
Glad  from  the  crush  to  rest  within, 
From  the  heart-sickness  and  the  din 
Where  envy's  voice  at  virtue's  pitch 
Mocks  you  because  your  gown  is  rich ; 
And  from  the  pale  girl's  dumb  rebuke, 
Whose  ill-clad  grace  and  toil-worn  look 
Proclaims  the  strength  that  keeps  her  weak. 

Is  rest  not  sometimes  sweet  to  you? — 
But  most  from  the  hatefulness  of  man, 
Who  spares  not  to  end  what  he  began. 
Whose  acts  are  ill  and  his  speech  ill. 
Who,  having  used  you  at  his  will, 
Thrusts  you  aside,  as  when  I  dine 
I  serve  the  dishes  and  the  wine. 

Then  he  begins  to  think  of  the  terrible  life  of  the  prostitute, 
what  it  means,  the  hideous  and  cruel  part  of  it,  and  the  end 
of  it.  Here  let  me  say  that  the  condition  of  such  a  woman 
in  England  is  infinitely  worse  than  it  is  in  many  other  coun- 
tries; in  no  place  is  she  treated  with  such  merciless  cruelty 
by  society.  He  asks  himself  why  this  should  be  so — how 
can  men  find  pleasure  in  cruelty  to  so  beautiful  and  simple- 
hearted  a  creature?  Then,  suddenly  looking  at  her  asleep, 
he  is  struck  by  a  terrible  resemblance  which  she  bears  to  the 
sweetest  woman  that  he  knows,  the  girl  perhaps  that  he 
would  marry.     Seen  asleep,  the  two  girls  look  exactly  the 


1&2  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

same.  Each  is  young,  graceful,  and  beautiful;  yet  one  is 
a  girl  adored  by  society  for  all  that  makes  a  woman  lovable, 
and  the  other  is — what^  These  lines  best  explain  the 
thought : 

Just  as  another  woman  sleeps ! 

Enough   to   throw   one's   thoughts   in   heaps 

Of  doubt  and  horror, — what  to  say 

Or  think, — this  awful  secret  sway, 

The  potter's  power  over  the  clay ! 

Of  the  same  lump  (it  has  been  said) 

For  honour  and  dishonour  made, 

Two  sister  vessels.     Here  is  one. 

My  cousin  Nell  is  fond  of  fun, 

And  fond  of  dress,  and  change,  and  praise, 

So  mere  a  woman  in  her  ways : 

And  if  her  sweet  eyes  rich  in  youth 

Are  like  her  lips  that  tell  the  truth, 

My  cousin  Nell  is  fond  of  love. 

And  she's  the  girl  I'm  proudest  of. 

Who  does  not  prize  her,  guard  her  well? 

The  love  of  change,  in  cousin  Nell, 

Shall  find  the  best  and  hold  it  dear: 

The  unconquered  mirth  turn  quieter 

Not  through  her  own,  through  others'  woe : 

The  conscious  pride  of  beauty  glow 

Beside  another's  pride  in  her. 

Of  the  same  lump  (as  it  is  said), 
For  honour  and  dishonour  made. 
Two  sister  vessels.     Here  is  one. 
It  makes  a  goblin  of  the  sun ! 

For,  judging  by  the  two  faces,  the  two  characters  were 
originally  the  same.  Yet  how  terrible  the  difference  now. 
This  woman  likes  what  all  women  like;  his  cousin,  the  girl 
he  most  loves  in  the  world,  has  the  very  same  love  of  nice 
dresses,  pleasures,  plays.  There  is  nothing  wrong  in  liking 
these  things.     But  in  the  case  of  the  prostitute  all  pleasure 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  103 

must  turn  for  her  to  ashes  and  bitterness.  The  pure  girl 
will  have  in  this  world  all  the  pretty  dresses,  and  pleasures,, 
and  love  that  she  can  wish  for;  and  will  never  have  reason 
to  feel  unhappy  except  when  she  hears  of  the  unhappiness 
of  somebody  else.  And  it  seems  a  monstrous  thing  under 
heaven  that  such  a  different  destiny  should  be  portioned  out 
to  beings  at  first  so  much  alike  as  those  two  women.  Even 
to  think  of  his  cousin  looking  like  her,  gives  him  a  shudder 
of  pain — not  because  he  cruelly  despises  the  sleeping  girl, 
but  because  he  thinks  of  what  might  have  happened  to  his 
own  dearest,  under  other  chances  of  life. 

Yet  again,  who  knows  what  may  be  in  the  future,  any 
more  than  what  has  been  in  the  past*?  All  this  world  is 
change.  The  fortunate  of  to-day  may  be  unfortunate  in 
their  descendants;  the  fortunate  of  long  ago  were  perhaps 
the  ancestors  of  the  miserable  of  to-day.  And  everything 
may  in  the  eternal  order  of  change  have  to  rise  and  sink 
alternately.  Cousin  Nell  is  to-day  a  fortunate  woman;  he,, 
the  dreamer  at  the  bed-side  of  the  nameless  girl,  is  a  fortu- 
nate man.  But  what  might  happen  to  their  children?  He 
thinks  again  of  the  strange  resemblance  of  the  two  women,, 
and  murmurs: 

So  pure, — so  fall'n  !     How  dare  to  think 
Of  the  first  common  kindred  link? 
Yet,  Jenny,  till  the  world  shall  burn 
It  seems  that  all  things  take  their  turn; 
And  who  shall  say  but  this  fair  tree 
May  need,  in  changes  that  may  be. 
Your  children's  children's  charity? 
Scorned  then,  no  doubt,  as  you  are  scorn'd ! 
Shall  no  man  hold  his  pride  forewarn'd 
Till  in  the  end,  the  Day  of  Days, 
At  Judgment,  one  of  his  own  race, 
As  frail  and  lost  as  you,  shall  rise, — 
His  daughter,  with  his  mother's  eyes? 

Then  he  begins  to  think  more  deeply  on  the  great  wrongs 
of  this  world,  the  great  misery  caused  by  vice,  the  cruelty 


104  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

of  lust  in  itself.  The  ruined  life  of  this  girl  represents  but 
one  fact  of  innumerable  facts  of  a  like  kind.  Millions  of 
beautiful  and  affectionate  women  have  been,  and  are  being, 
and  will  be  through  all  time  to  come,  sacrificed  in  this  way 
to  lust — selfish  and  foolish  and  cruel  lust,  that  destroys 
mind  and  body  together.  The  mystery  of  the  dark  side 
of  life  comes  to  him  in  a  new  way.  He  cannot  explain  it — 
who  can  explain  the  original  meaning  of  pain  in  this  world? 
But  he  begins  to  get  at  least  a  new  gleam  of  truth — this 
great  truth,  that  every  one  who  seeks  pleasure  in  the  way 
that  he  at  first  intended  to  seek  it  that  night,  adds  a  little 
to  the  great  sum  of  human  misery.  For  vice  exists  only  at 
the  cost  of  misery.  The  question  is  not,  "Is  it  right  for 
me  or  wrong  for  me  to  take  what  is  forbidden  if  I  pay 
for  it."  The  real  question  is,  "Is  it  right  for  me  or  wrong 
for  me  to  help  in  any  way  to  support  that  condition  of 
society  which  sacrifices  lives,  body,  and  soul,  to  cruelty  and 
selfishness."  We  all  of  us  in  youth  think  chiefly  about 
right  and  wrong  in  their  immediate  relations  to  ourselves 
and  our  friends.  Only  later  in  life,  after  we  have  seen  a 
great  deal  of  the  red  of  human  pain,  do  we  begin  to  think 
of  the  consequences  of  an  act  in  relation  to  the  happiness 
or  unhappiness  of  humanity. 

Suddenly  the  morning  comes  as  he  is  thinking  thus.  At 
once  he  ceases  to  be  the  philosopher,  and  becomes  again  the 
gentleman  of  the  world.  The  girl's  head  is  still  upon  his 
knees;  he  looks  at  the  sleeping  face,  and  wonders  whether 
any  painter  could  have  painted  a  face  more  beautiful.  But 
the  beauty  does  not  appeal  to  his  senses  in  any  passional 
way;  it  only  fills  him  with  unspeakable  compassion.  He 
does  not  awake  her,  but  lifts  her  into  a  more  comfortable 
position  for  sleeping,  and  leaves  beside  her  pillow  a  present 
of  gold  coins,  and  then  steals  away  without  bidding  her 
good-bye.  The  night  has  not  given  him  pleasure,  but  pain 
only — yet  a  pain  that  has  made  his  heart  more  kindly  and 
his  thoughts  more  wise  than  they  had  been  before. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  105 


IV 

Our  last  lecture  dealt  with  the  shorter  narrative  poems 
of  Rossetti,  including  the  ballads.  There  remain  to  be 
considered  two  other  narrative  poems  of  a  much  more  ex- 
tended kind.  They  are  quite  unique  in  English  literature; 
and  both  of  them  deal  with  mediaeval  subjects.  One, 
again,  is  chiefly  objective  in  its  treatment;  and  the  other 
chiefly  subjective — that  is  to  say,  psychological.  One  is  a 
fragment,  but  the  most  wonderful  fragment  of  its  kind  in 
existence;  more  wonderful,  I  think,  than  even  the  frag- 
ments of  Coleridge,  both  as  to  volume  and  finish.  The 
other  is  complete,  a  story  of  magic  and  passion  entitled 
"Rose  Mary."  We  may  first  deal  with  "Rose  Mary,"  giv- 
ing the  general  plan  of  the  poem,  rather  than  extracts  of 
any  length;  for  this  narration  cannot  very  well  be  illus- 
trated by  examples.  We  shall  make  some  quotations  only 
in  illustration  of  the  finish  and  the  beauty  of  the  work. 

The  subject  of  "Rose  Mary"  was  peculiarly  adapted  to 
Rossetti's  genius.  In  the  Middle  Ages  there  was  a  great 
belief  in  the  virtue  of  jewels  and  crystals  of  a  precious  kind. 
Belief  in  the  magical  power  of  rubies,  diamonds,  emeralds, 
and  opals  was  not  confined  either  to  Europe  or  to  modern 
civilisation;  it  had  existed  from  great  antiquity  in  the 
Orient,  and  had  been  accepted  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans. 
This  belief  was  perhaps  forgotten  after  the  destruction  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  for  a  time  at  least,  in  Europe;  but  the 
Crusades  revived  it.  Talismanic  stones  were  brought  back 
from  Palestine  by  many  pilgrim-knights;  and  as  some  of 
these  were  marked  with  Arabic  characters,  then  supposed 
by  the  ignorant  to  be  characters  of  magic,  supernatural 
legends  were  invented  to  account  for  the  history  of  not  a 
few.  Also  there  was  a  certain  magical  use  to  which  pre- 
cious stones  were  put  during  the  Middle  Ages,  and  to  which 
they  are  still  sometimes  put  in  Oriental  countries.     This  is 


106  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

called  crystallomancy.  Crystal lomancy  is  the  art  of  seeing 
the  future  in  crystals,  or  glass,  or  transparent  substances  of 
jewels.  The  same  art  can  be  practised  even  with  ink — a 
drop  of  ink,  held  in  the  hand,  offering  to  the  eye  the  same 
reflecting  surface  that  a  black  jewel  would  do.  In  Egypt, 
Arabia,  Persia,  and  India  divination  is  still  practised  with 
ink.  This  is  the  same  thing  as  crystallomancy.  Usually 
in  those  countries  a  young  boy  or  a  young  girl  is  used  by 
the  diviner.  He  mesmerises  the  boy  or  the  girl,  and  bids 
him  or  her  look  into  the  crystal  or  the  ink-drop,  as  the  case 
may  be,  and  say  what  he  or  she  sees  there.  In  this  way, 
the  future  is  supposed  to  be  told.  Modern  investigation 
has  taught  us  how  the  whole  thing  is  done,  though  science 
has  not  been  able  yet  to  explain  all  that  goes  on  in  the  mind 
of  the  "subject."  But  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  whole 
process  was  absolutely  mysterious,  it  was  thought  to  be  the 
work  of  spirits  inside  the  stone,  or  crystal,  or  ink-drop. 
And  this  is  the  superstition  to  which  Rossetti  refers  in  his 
poem  "Rose  Mary." 

Now  there  is  one  more  fact  which  must  be  explained  in 
connection  with  crystallomancy.  It  has  always  been 
thought  that  the  "subject" — that  is,  the  boy  or  girl  who 
looks  into  the  stone,  crystal,  or  ink-drop — must  be  abso- 
lutely innocent.  The  "subject"  must  be  virtuous.  In  the 
Catholic  Middle  Ages  the  same  idea  took  form  especially  in 
relation  to  the  chastity  of  the  "subject."  Chastity  was,  in 
those  centuries,  considered  a  magical  virtue.  A  maiden,  it 
was  thought,  could  play  with  lions  or  tigers,  and  not  be  hurt 
by  them.  A  maiden — and  the  word  was  then  used  for  both 
sexes,  as  it  is  sometimes  used  by  Tennyson  in  his  Idylls — 
could  see  ghosts  or  spirits,  and  could  be  made  use  of  for 
purposes  of  crystallomancy  even  by  a  very  wicked  person. 
But  should  the  subject  have  been  secretly  guilty  of  any 
fault,  then  the  power  to  see  would  be  impaired.  The  trag- 
edy of  Rossetti's  poem  turns  upon  this  fact. 

In  the  poem  a  precious  stone,  of  the  description  called 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  107 

beryl,  is  the  instrument  of  divination.  This  beryl  is  round, 
lilce  a  terrestrial  globe,  and  is  supposed  to  be  of  the  shape 
of  the  world.  It  is  half  transparent,  but  there  are  cloudings 
inside  of  it.  Hidden  among  these  cloudings  are  a  number 
of  evil  spirits,  who  were  enclosed  in  the  jewel  by  magic. 
These  spirits  make  the  future  appear  visible  to  any  virtu- 
ous person  who  looks  into  the  stone;  but  they  have  power 
to  deceive  and  to  injure  any  one  coming  to  consult  them  who 
is  not  perfectly  chaste.  The  stone  came  from  the  East,  and 
it  was  obtained  only  at  the  sacrifice  of  the  soul  of  the  person 
who  obtained  it.  Having  been  brought  to  England,  it  be- 
came the  property  of  a  knightly  family.  This  family  con- 
sists only  of  a  widow  and  her  daughter  Rose  Mary.  The 
daughter  is  in  a  state  of  great  anxiety.  She  was  to  be  mar- 
ried to  a  certain  knight,  who  has  not  kept  his  affectionate 
promises.  The  daughter  and  the  mother  both  fear  that  the 
knight  may  have  been  killed  by  some  of  his  enemies.  So 
they  resolve  to  consult  the  beryl-stone.  The  mother  does 
not  know  that  her  daughter  has  been  too  intimate  with  the 
absent  knight.  Believing  that  Rose  Mary  is  all  purity,  the 
mother  makes  her  the  subject  of  an  experiment  in  crystal- 
lomancy ;  and  she  looks  into  the  beryl. 

First  she  sees  an  old  man  with  a  broom,  sweeping  away 
dust  and  cobwebs;  that  is  always  the  first  thing  seen.  Then 
the  inside  of  the  beryl  becomes  perfectly  clear,  and  the  girl 
can  see  the  open  country,  and  the  road  along  which  her  lover 
is  expected  to  travel.  And  she  sees  him  too.  But  there  are 
perhaps  enemies  waiting  for  him.  The  mother  tells  her  to 
look  for  those  enemies.  She  looks;  she  sees  the  points  of 
lances,  in  a  hiding  place  by  a  roadside,  and  there  is  the 
evidence  of  what  the  lover  has  to  fear  in  that  direction. 
"Now  look  in  the  other  direction,"  says  the  mother.  The 
girl  does  so,  and  sees  the  whole  road  clearly,  except  in  one 
place,  in  a  valley.  There  she  says  that  there  is  a  mist; 
and  she  cannot  see  under  the  mist.  This  surprises  the 
mother,  and  she  takes  away  the  beryl.     The  presence  of  the 


108  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

mist  indicates  that  Rose  Mary  has  committed  some  sin. 

As  a  consequence  the  daughter  confesses  to  the  mother 
all  that  has  occurred.  She  is  not  severely  blamed;  she  is 
only  gently  rebuked,  and  forgiven  with  great  love  and  ten- 
derness. But  it  is  probable  that  the  sin  must  be  expiated. 
Both  are  afraid.  Then  the  expiation  comes.  The  lover  is 
killed  by  his  enemies,  and  killed  exactly  on  that  part  of 
the  road  where  the  mist  was  in  the  image  seen  in  the  beryl- 
stone.  The  mother  goes  to  the  dead  knight's  home,  and 
examines  the  body.  Evidently  the  man  had  died  fighting 
bravely.  The  woman  at  first  is  all  pity  for  him,  as  well 
as  for  her  daughter.  Suddenly  she  notices  something  in 
the  dead  man's  breast.  She  takes  it  out,  and  finds  that  it 
is  a  package  containing  a  love-letter,  and  a  lock  of  hair. 
The  hair  is  bright  gold — while  the  hair  of  Rose  Mary  is 
black.  This  makes  the  mother  suspicious,  and  she  reads  the 
letter.  Then  she  no  longer  pities  but  abhors  the  dead  man ; 
for  the  letter  proves  him  to  have  had  another  sweetheart, 
and  that  he  had  intended  to  betray  Rose  Mary. 

When  the  daughter  learns  of  her  lover's  death,  she  suf- 
fers terribly;  but  she  makes  sincere  repentance  for  her  fault, 
and  then  in  her  mother's  absence  she  determines  to  destroy 
the  beryl-stone,  as  a  devilish  thing.  This  is  another  way 
of  committing  suicide,  because  whoever  breaks  the  stone  is 
certain  to  be  killed  by  the  enraged  spirits  cast  out  of  it.  By 
one  blow  of  a  sword  the  stone  is  broken,  and  Rose  Mary 
atones  for  all  her  faults  by  death.  This  is  the  whole  of  the 
story. 

The  extraordinary  charm  of  the  story  is  in  its  vividness — 
a  vividness  perhaps  without  equal  even  in  the  best  work  of 
Tennyson  (certainly  much  finer  than  similar  work  in  Cole- 
ridge), and  in  the  attractive  characterisation  of  mother  and 
daughter.  There  is  this  great  difference  between  the  medi- 
aeval poems  of  Coleridge  or  Scott,  and  those  of  Rossetti, 
that  when  you  are  reading  "The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel" 
or  the  wonderful  "Christabel,"  you  feel  that  you  are  read- 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  109 

ing  a  fairy-tale,  but  when  you  read  Rossetti  you  are  looking 
at  life  and  feeling  human  passion.  It  is  a  great  puzzle  to 
critics  how  any  man  could  make  the  Middle  Ages  live  as 
Rossetti  did.  One  reason,  I  think,  is  that  Rossetti  was 
a  great  painter  as  well  as  a  great  poet,  and  he  studied 
the  life  of  the  past  in  documents  and  in  museums  until  it 
became  to  him  as  real  as  the  present.  But  we  must  also 
suppose  that  he  inherited  a  great  deal  of  his  peculiar  power. 
This  power  never  wearies.  Although  the  romance  of  Rose 
Mary  is  not  very  short,  you  do  not  get  tired  of  wondering 
at  its  beauty  until  you  reach  the  end.  It  is  divided  into 
three  parts,  which  is  a  good  thing  for  the  student,  as  he  can 
see  the  structure  of  the  composition  at  once.  It  is  written 
in  stanzas  of  five  lines,  thus  arranged — a^  a^  b^  b,  b.  You 
would  think  this  measure  monotonous,  but  it  is  not.  I  give 
two  examples.  The  first  is  the  description  of  the  magic 
jewel. 

The  lady  unbound  her  jewelled  zone 
And  drew  from  her  robe  the  Beryl-stone. 
Shaped  it  was  to  a  shadowy  sphere, — 
World  of  our  world,  the  sun's  compeer, 
That  bears  and  buries  the  toiling  year. 

With  shuddering  light  'twas  stirred  and  strewn 
Like  the  cloud-nest  of  the  wading  moon : 
Freaked  it  was  as  the  bubble's  ball, 
Rainbow-hued  through  a  misty  pall, 
Like  the  middle  light  of  the  waterfall. 

Shadows  dwelt  in  its  teeming  girth 
Of  the  known  and  unknown  things  of  earth ; 
The  cloud  above  and  the  wave  around, — 
The  central  fire  at  the  sphere's  heart  bound, 
Like  doomsday  prisoned  underground. 

I  feel  quite  sure  that  even  Tennyson  could  not  have  done 
this.  Only  a  great  painter,  as  well  as  a  great  observer, 
could  have  done  it;  and  the  choice  of  words  is  astonishing 


110  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

in  its  exquisiteness.  Most  of  them  have  more  than  one 
meaning,  and  both  meanings  are  equally  implied  by  their 
use.  Take,  for  example,  the  word  "shadowy";  it  means 
cloudy  and  it  also  means  ghostly.  Thus  it  is  peculiarly 
appropriate  to  picture  the  magic  stone  as  full  of  moving 
shadows,  themselves  of  ghostly  character.  Or  take  the 
word  "shuddering";  it  means  trembling  with  cold  or  fear, 
and  it  means  also  a  quick  trembling,  never  a  slow  motion. 
Just  such  a  word  might  be  used  to  describe  the  strange  vi- 
bration of  air-bubbles  enclosed  in  a  volcanic  crystal.  But 
we  have  also  the  suggestion  here  of  a  ghostly  motion,  a 
motion  that  gives  a  shiver  of  fear  to  the  person  who  sees  it. 
Or  take  the  word  "freaked."  "Freak"  is  commonly  used 
to  signify  a  mischievous  bit  of  play,  a  wild  fancy.  "Fanci- 
fully marked"  would  be  the  exact  meaning  of  "freaked"  in 
the  ordinary  sense;  but  here  it  is  likewise  appropriate  as  a 
description  of  the  streams  and  streaks  of  colour  playing  over 
the  surface  of  a  bubble  without  any  apparent  law,  as  if  they 
were  made  by  some  whimsical  spirit.  Now  every  verse  of 
the  whole  long  poem  is  equally  worthy  of  study  for  its  aston- 
ishing finish.  I  shall  give  a  few  more  verses  merely  to 
show  the  application  of  the  same  power  to  a  description 
of  pain.  The  girl  has  just  been  told  of  her  lover's  mur- 
der; and  the  whole  immediate  consequence  is  told  in  five 
lines. 

Once  she  sprang  as  the  heifer  springs 

With  the  wolf's  teeth  at  its  red  heart-strings : 

First  'twas  fire  in  her  breast  and  brain, 

And  then  scarce  hers  but  the  whole  world's  pain, 

As  she  gave  one  shriek  and  sank  again. 

The  first  two  lines  might  give  you  an  undignified  image 
unless  you  understood  the  position  of  the  girl  when  she 
received  the  news.  She  was  kneeling  at  her  mother's  feet, 
with  her  mother's  arms  around  her.  On  being  told  the 
terrible  thing,  she  tries  to  spring  up,  because  of  the  shock 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  111 

of  the  pain — just  as  a  young  heifer  would  leap  when  the 
wolf  had  seized  it  from  underneath.  A  wolf  snaps  at  the 
belly  of  the  animal,  close  to  the  heart.  Therefore  the  com- 
parison is  admirable.  As  for  the  rest  of  the  verse,  any 
physician  can  confirm  its  accuracy.  The  up-rush  of  blood 
at  the  instant  of  a  great  shock  of  pain  feels  like  a  great 
sudden  heat,  burning  up  toward  the  head.  And  in  such  a 
time  one  realises  that  certain  forms  of  pain,  moral  pain,  are 
larger  than  oneself — too  great  to  be  borne.  Psychologi- 
cally, great  moral  pain  depends  upon  nervous  development; 
and  this  nervous  susceptibility  to  pain  is  greater  than  would 
seem  fitted  to  the  compass  of  one  life.  Moral  pain  can  kill. 
It  is  said  that  in  such  times  we  feel  not  only  our  own  pain, 
but  the  pain  of  all  those  among  our  ancestors  who  suffered 
in  like  manner.  Thus,  by  inheritance,  individual  pain  is 
more  than  individual.  At  all  events  the  fourth  line  ot  the 
stanza  I  have  quoted  will  appear  astonishingly  true  to  any- 
body who  knows  the  greater  forms  of  mental  suffering. 

Leaving  this  poem,  which  could  not  be  too  highly  praised, 
we  may  turn  to  "The  Bride's  Prelude,"  the  greatest  of  the 
longer  compositions,  therefore  the  greatest  thing  that  Ros- 
setti  did.  Unfortunately,  perhaps,  it  is  unfinished.  It  is 
only  a  fragment;  death  overtook  the  writer  before  he  was 
able  to  complete  it.  Like  "Rose  Mary,"  it  leads  us  back 
to  the  Middle  Ages,  But  here  there  is  no  magic,  nothing 
ghostly,  nothing  impossible;  there  is  only  truth,  atrocious, 
terrible  truth — a  tale  of  cruelty,  treachery,  and  pain  related 
by  the  victim.  The  victim  is  a  bride.  She  is  just  going 
to  be  married.  But  before  her  marriage,  she  has  a  story 
to  tell  her  sister — a  story  so  sad  and  so  frightful  that  it 
requires  strong  nerves  to  read  the  thing  without  pain. 

We  may  suppose  that  the  incident  occurred  in  old  France, 
or — though  I  doubt  it — in  Norman  England.  The  scenery 
and  the  names  remind  us  rather  of  Southern  France.  All 
the  facts  belong  to  the  life  of  the  feudal  aristocracy.  We 
are  among  princes  and  princesses;  great  lords  of  territory 


112  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

and  great  lords  of  battle  are  introduced  to  us,  with  their 
secret  sorrows  and  shames.  Great  ladies,  too,  open  their 
hearts  to  us,  and  prove  so  intensely  human  that  it  is  very 
hard  to  believe  the  whole  story  is  a  dream.  It  rather  seems 
as  if  we  had  known  all  these  people,  and  that  our  lives  had 
at  some  time  been  mingled  with  theirs.  The  eldest  daugh- 
ter of  one  great  house,  very  beautiful,  and  very  innocent, 
is  taken  advantage  of  by  a  retainer  in  the  castle.  She  is 
foolish  and  unable  to  imagine  that  any  gentleman  could 
intend  to  do  her  a  wrong.  The  retainer,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  a  very  cunning  villain.  His  real  purpose  is  to  bring 
shame  upon  the  daughter  of  the  house.  Why'?  Because, 
as  he  is  only  a  poor  knight,  he  could  not  hope  to  marry  into 
a  princely  family.  But  if  he  can  seduce  one  of  the  girls, 
then  perhaps  the  family  will  be  only  too  glad  to  have  him 
marry  his  victim,  because  that  will  hide  their  shame.  Evi- 
dently he  has  plotted  for  this.  But  his  plans,  and  every- 
body's plans,  are  affected  by  unexpected  results  of  civil  war. 
His  masters,  being  defeated  in  a  great  battle,  have  to  retreat 
to  the  mountains  for  a  time;  and  then  he  deserts  them  in 
the  basest  manner.  Meantime  the  unhappy  girl  is  found 
to  be  with  child.  Death  was  the  rule  in  those  days  for 
such  a  case — burning  alive.  Her  brothers  wish  to  kill  her. 
But  her  father  interferes  and  saves  her.  It  is  decided  only 
that  the  child  shall  be  taken  from  her — to  be  killed,  prob- 
ably. Everybody  is  forbidden  to  speak  of  the  matter. 
Some  retainers  who  did  speak  of  it  are  hanged  for  an  ex- 
ample. Presently,  by  another  battle,  the  family  return 
into  their  old  possessions,  and  enormously  increase  their  an- 
cient power.  When  this  happens  the  scoundrel  that  se- 
duced the  daughter  of  the  house  and  then  deserted  the 
family  returns.  Why  does  he  return?  Now  is  the  time 
to  fulfil  his  purpose.  He  has  become  a  great  soldier  and 
a  nobleman  in  his  own  right.  Now  he  can  ask  for  that 
young  lady  in  marriage,  and  they  dare  not  refuse.  If  they 
refuse,  he  can  revenge  himself  by  telling  the  story  of  her 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  113 

disgrace.  If  they  accept  him  as  a  son-in-law,  they  will  also 
be  obliged  to  make  him  very  powerful;  and  he  will  know 
how  to  take  every  advantage.  The  girl  is  not  consulted 
at  all.  Her  business  is  to  obey.  She  thinks  that  it  would 
be  better  to  die  than  to  marry  the  wicked  man  that  had 
wronged  her;  but  she  must  obey  and  she  is  ordered  to  marry 
him.  He  cares  nothing  about  her;  she  is  only  the  tool  by 
which  he  wishes  to  win  his  way  into  power.  But,  cunning 
as  he  is,  the  brothers  of  the  girl  are  even  more  cunning. 
They  wish  for  the  marriage  only  for  the  purpose  of  getting 
the  man  into  their  hands,  just  for  one  moment.  He  shall 
marry  her,  but  immediately  afterwards  he  shall  disappear 
forever  from  the  sight  of  men.  The  bride  does  not  know 
the  purpose  of  her  terrible  brothers ;  she  thinks  they  are  cruel 
to  her  when  she  tells  her  story,  but  they  only  wish  to  avenge 
her,  and  they  are  much  too  prudent  to  tell  her  what  they 
are  going  to  do.  The  poem  does  not  go  any  further  than 
the  moment  before  the  marriage.  The  first  part  is  quite 
finished;  but  the  second  part  was  never  written. 

The  whole  of  this  great  composition  is  in  verses  of  five 
lines,  curiously  arranged.  Rossetti  adopts  a  different  form 
of  verse  for  almost  every  one  of  his  narrations.  This  is 
quite  as  unique  a  measure  in  its  way — that  is,  in  nineteenth 
century  poetry — as  was  the  measure  of  Tennyson's  'Tn 
Memoriam"  in  elegiac  poetry.  Now  we  shall  try  to  illus- 
trate the  style  of  the  poem. 

Against  the  haloed  lattice-panes 

The  bridesmaid  sunned  her  breast; 
Then  to  the  glass  turned  tall  and  free, 
And  braced  and  shifted  daintily 
Her  loin-belt  through  her  cote-hardie. 

The  belt  was  silver,  and  the  clasp 

Of  lozenged  arm-bearings; 
A  world  of  mirrored  tints  minute 
The  rippling  sunshine  wrought  into  't, 
That  flushed  her  hand  and  warmed  her  foot. 


ii4j  studies  in  rossetti 

At  least  an  hour  had  Aloyse, — 

Her  jewels  in  her  hair, — 
Her  white  gown,  as  became  a  bride, 
Quartered  in  silver  at  each  side, — 
Sat  thus  aloof,  as  if  to  hide. 

Over  her  bosom,  that  lay  still, 
The  vest  was  rich  in  grain. 
With  close  pearls  wholly  overset : 
Around  her  throat  the  fastenings  met 
Of  chevesayle  and  mantelet. 

Absolutely  real  as  this  seems,  we  know  that  the  details  must 
have  been  carefully  studied  in  museums.  Elsewhere,  ex- 
cept perhaps  in  very  old  pictures,  these  things  no  longer 
exist.  There  are  no  more  loin-belts  of  silver,  no  cote- 
hardies,  no  chevesayle  or  mantelet.  I  cannot  explain  to 
you  what  they  are  without  pictures — further  than  to  say 
that  they  were  parts  of  the  attire  of  a  lady  of  rank  about 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  Brides  do  not  now 
have  their  white  robes  "quartered  in  silver" — that  is, 
figured  with  the  family  crest  or  arms.  Why  silver  instead 
of  gold?  Simply  because  of  the  rule  that  brides  should  be 
all  in  white;  therefore  even  the  crest  was  worked  in  white 
metal  instead  of  gold.  By  the  word  vest,  you  must  also 
understand  an  ancient  garment  for  women;  the  modern 
word  signifies  a  garment  worn  only  by  men.  "Grain"  is 
an  old  term  for  texture.  The  description  of  the  light  play- 
ing on  the  belt-clasp  of  the  bridesmaid,  in  the  second  stanza, 
is  a  marvellous  bit  of  work,  the  effect  being  given  especially 
by  three  words — "lozenged,"  "rippling,"  for  the  sunshine, 
and  "minute,"  for  the  separate  flushes  or  sparklings  thrown 
off  from  the  surface.  But  all  is  wonderful ;  this  is  painting 
with  words  exactly  as  a  painter  paints  with  colours. 
Sounds  are  treated  with  the  same  wonderful  vividness: 

Although  the  lattice  had  dropped  loose, 
There  was  no  wind :  the  heat 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  115 

Being  so  at  rest  that  Amelotte 
Heard  far  beneath  the  plunge  and  float 
Of  a  hound  swimming  in  the  moat. 

Some  minutes  since,  two  rooks  had  toiled 

Home  to  the  nests  that  crowned 
Ancestral  ash-trees.     Through  the  glare 
Beating  again,  they  seemed  to  tear 
With  that  thick  caw  the  woof  o'  the  air. 

One  must  have  been  in  the  tower  of  a  castle  to  feel  the 
full  force  of  the  first  stanza.  The  two  girls  are  in  a  room 
perhaps  one  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hundred  feet  above 
the  water  of  the  moat,  so  that  except  in  a  time  of  extraordi- 
nary stillness  they  would  not  hear  ordinary  sounds  from  so 
far  below.  And  notice  that  the  poet  does  not  tell  us  that 
this  was  because  the  air  did  not  move ;  he  says  that  the  heat 
was  at  rest.  Very  expressive — in  great  summer  heat,  with- 
out wind,  the  air  itself  seems  to  our  senses  not  air  but  fluid 
heat.  And  the  same  impression  of  summer  is  given  by  the 
description  of  the  two  crows  flying  to  their  nest  and  back 
again,  and  screaming  as  they  fly.  The  poet  does  not  say 
that  they  flew;  he  says  they  toiled  home — because  flying  in 
that  thick  warm  air  is  difficult  for  them.  When  they  re- 
turn he  uses  another  word,  still  more  impressive;  he  says 
they  beat  again  through  the  glare.  This  makes  you  hear 
the  heavy  motion  of  the  wings.  And  he  describes  the  crow 
as  seeming  to  tear  the  air,  because  that  air  is  so  heavy  that 
it  seems  like  a  thing  woven. 

Here  is  a  strangely  powerful  stanza  describing  the  diffi- 
culty of  speaking  about  a  painful  subject  that  for  many 
years  one  has  tried  to  forget : 

Her  thought,  long  stagnant,  stirred  by  speech, 

Gave  her  a  sick  recoil ; 
As,  dip  thy  fingers  through  the  green 
That  masks  a  pool, — where  they  have  been 
The  naked  depth  is  black  between. 


116  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

Any  of  you  who  as  boys  have  played  about  a  castle  moat, 
and  stirred  the  green  water  weeds  covering  the  still  water, 
must  have  remarked  that  the  water  looks  black  as  ink  under- 
neath. Of  course  it  is  not  black  in  itself;  but  the  weeds 
keep  out  the  sun,  so  that  it  seems  black  because  of  the 
shadow.  The  poet's  comparison  has  a  terrible  exactness 
here.  The  mind  is  compared  to  stagnant  water  covered 
with  water-weeds.  Weeds  grow  upon  water  in  this  way 
only  when  there  has  been  no  wind  for  a  long  time,  and  no 
current.  The  condition  of  a  mind  that  does  not  think,  that 
dares  not  think,  is  like  stagnant  water  in  this  way.  Mem- 
ory becomes  covered  up  with  other  things,  matters  not  re- 
lating to  the  past. 

Now  we  can  take  four  stanzas  from  the  scene  of  the  secret 
family  meeting,  after  the  shame  has  been  confessed  and  is 
known.     They  are  very  powerful. 

"Time  crept.     Upon  a  day  at  length 

My  kinsfolk  sat  with  me : 
That  which  they  asked  was  bare  and  plain : 
I  answered :  the  whole  bitter  strain 
Was  again  said,  and  heard  again. 

"Fierce  Raoul  snatched  his  sword,  and  turned 

The  point  against  my  breast. 
I  bared  it,  smiling :     'To  the  heart 
Strike  home,'  I  said ;  'another  dart 
Wreaks  hourly  there  a  deadlier  smart.' 

"  'Twas  then  my  sire  struck  down  the  sword, 

And  said,  with  shaken  lips : 
'She  from  whom  all  of  you  receive 
Your  life,  so  smiled ;  and  I  forgive.' 
Thus  for  my  mother's  sake,  I  live. 

"But  I,  a  mother  even  as  she, 

Turned  shuddering  to  the  wall : 
For  I  said :  'Great  God  !  and  what  would  I  do. 
When  to  the  sword,  with  the  thing  I  knew, 
I  offered  not  one  life,  but  two !'  " 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  117 

This  is  now  the  most  terrible  part  of  the  story;  and  it  has 
a  humanity  about  it  that  almost  makes  us  doubt.  Fancy 
the  situation.  The  daughter  of  a  prince  unchaste  with  a 
common  retainer.  Now  in  princely  families  chastity  was 
of  as  much  importance  as  physical  strength  and  will;  it 
meant  everything — honour,  purity  of  race,  the  possibility 
of  alliance.  And  a  great  house  is  thus  disgraced.  We  can 
sympathise  with  the  horrible  mental  suffering  of  the  girl, 
but  it  is  impossible  not  to  sympathise  also  even  with  the 
terrible  brother  that  wishes  to  kill  her.  He  is  right,  she 
deserves  death;  but  he  is  young,  and  cruel  because  young. 
The  father  sorrows,  and  seeing  the  girl  smiling,  thinks  of 
the  dead  mother,  and  forgives.  This  is  the  only  point  at 
which  we  feel  inclined  to  lay  down  the  book  and  ask  ques- 
tions. Would  a  father  in  such  a  position  have  done  this  in 
those  cruel  ages'?  Would  he  have  allowed  himself  to  pity*? 
— or  rather,  could  he  have  allowed  himself  to  pity^  Ten- 
der-hearted men  did  not  rule  in  those  days.  We  have  rec- 
ords of  husbands  burning  their  wives,  of  fathers  killing  their 
sons.  All  we  can  say  is  that  an  exception  might  have  ex- 
isted, just  as  Rossetti  imagines.  Human  nature  was  of 
course  not  different  then  from  what  it  is  now,  but  it  is  quite 
certain  that  the  gentle  side  of  human  nature  seldom  dis- 
played itself  in  the  families  of  the  feudal  princes;  a  man 
who  was  gentle  could  not  rule.  In  Italy  sons  who  did  not 
show  the  ruling  character  were  apt  to  be  killed  or  poisoned. 
One  must  understand  that  feudal  life  was  not  much  more 
moral  than  other  life. 

I  think  we  can  here  turn  to  another  department  of  Ros- 
setti's  verse.  I  only  hope  that  the  examples  given  from  the 
"Bride's  Prelude"  will  interest  you  sufficiently  to  make  you 
at  a  later  day  turn  to  this  wonderful  poem  for  a  careful 
study  of  its  beauty  and  power. 


118  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 


When  we  come  to  the  study  of  the  lives  of  the  Victorian 
poets,  we  shall  find  that  Rossetti's  whole  existence  was  gov- 
erned by  his  passion  for  one  woman,  whom  he  loved  in  a 
strange  mystical  way,  with  a  love  that  was  half  art  (art  in 
the  good  sense)  and  half  idolatry.  To  him  she  was  much 
more  than  a  woman;  she  was  a  divinity,  an  angel,  a  model 
for  all  things  beautiful.  You  know  that  he  was  a  great 
painter,  and  in  a  multitude  of  beautiful  pictures  he  painted 
the  face  of  this  woman.  He  composed  his  poems  also  in 
order  to  please  her.  He  lost  her  within  a  little  more  than 
a  year  after  winning  her,  and  this  nearly  killed  him.  I 
may  say  that  throughout  all  his  poems,  speaking  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  there  are  references  to  this  great  love  of  his  life; 
but  there  is  one  portion  of  his  work  that  we  must  consider 
as  especially  illustrating  it,  and  that  is  the  "House  of  Life," 
a  collection  of  more  than  one  hundred  sonnets  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  love  and  its  kindred  emotions.  But  the  love  of 
which  Rossetti  sings  is  not  the  love  of  a  young  man  for  a 
girl — not  the  love  of  youth  and  maid.  It  is  married  love 
carried  to  the  utmost  degree  of  worship.  You  will  think 
this  a  strange  subject;  and  I  confess  that  it  is.  Very  few 
men  could  be  praised  for  touching  such  a  subject.  Coven- 
try Patmore,  you  know,  was  an  exception.  He  made  the 
subject  of  his  own  courtship,  wedding,  and  married  life 
the  subject  of  his  poetry,  and  he  did  it  so  nicely  and  so 
tenderly  that  his  book  had  a  great  success.  But  Rossetti 
did  his  work  in  an  entirely  different  way,  which  I  must  try 
to  explain. 

Unlike  Patmore,  Rossetti  did  not  openly  declare  that  he 
took  any  personal  experience  for  the  subject  of  his  study; 
we  only  perceive,  through  knowledge  of  his  life,  and 
through  suggestions  obtained  from  other  parts  of  his  work, 
that  personal  love  and  personal  loss  were  his  great  inspira- 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  119 

tion.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  any  man  who  sings  about  love 
must  draw  upon  his  own  personal  experience  of  the  passion. 
Every  lover  thinks  of  love  in  his  own  way.  But  the  value 
of  a  love  poem  is  not  the  personal  part  of  it;  the  value  of 
a  love  poem  is  according  to  the  degree  in  which  it  represents 
universal  experience,  or  experience  of  a  very  large  kind. 
It  must  represent  to  some  degree  a  general  philosophy  of 
life.  Even  the  commonest  little  love-song,  such  as  a  peas- 
ant might  sing  in  the  streets  of  Tokyo,  as  he  comes  in  from 
the  country  walking  beside  his  horse,  will  represent  some- 
thing of  the  philosophy  of  life  if  it  is  a  good  and  true  com- 
position, no  matter  how  vulgar  may  be  the  idiom  of  it. 
When  we  come  to  think  about  it,  we  shall  find  that  all  great 
poetry  is  in  this  sense  also  philosophical  poetry. 

Rossetti,  as  I  have  already  shown  you,  was  a  true  philoso- 
pher in  certain  directions;  and  he  applied  his  philosophical 
powers,  as  well  as  his  artistic  powers,  to  his  own  experi- 
ences, so  as  to  adapt  them  to  the  uses  of  great  poetry.  He 
is  never  narrowly  impersonal.  And  his  sonnets  are  really 
very  wonderful  compositions — not  reflecting  universal  ex- 
perience so  as  to  be  universally  understood,  but  reflecting 
universal  experience  so  as  to  be  understood  by  cultivated 
minds  only.  These  productions  are  altogether  above  the 
range  of  the  common  mind;  they  are  extremely  subtle  and 
elaborate,  both  as  to  thought  and  as  to  form.  But  their 
subject  is  not  at  all  special.  Rossetti  had  the  idea  that 
every  phase  of  happiness  and  sorrow  belonging  to  married 
life,  from  the  hour  of  the  wedding  night  to  the  hour  of 
death,  was  worthy  of  poetical  treatment,  because  married 
life  is  related  to  the  deepest  human  emotions.  And  in  the 
space  of  one  hundred  sonnets  he  treats  every  phase.  This 
series  of  sonnets  is  divided  into  two  groups.  The  first  con- 
tains poems  relating  to  the  early  conditions  of  love  in  mar- 
riage; the  second  group  treats  especially  of  the  more 
sorrowful  aspects  of  a  married  life — the  trials  of  death,  the 
pains  of  memory,  and  the  hopes  and  fears  of  reuniting  after 


120  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

death.  The  second  part  does  not,  however,  contain  all  the 
sad  pieces;  there  are  very  sad  ones  in  the  first  group  of 
fifty-nine.  We  have  already  studied  one  of  the  first  group, 
the  piece  called  "The  Birth-Bond."  There  is  another  piece 
in  this  group,  the  first  of  four  sonnets,  which  is  exquisite  as 
a  bit  of  fancy.     It  is  entitled  "Willowwood." 

I  sat  with  Love  upon  a  woodside  well, 

Leaning  across  the  water,  I  and  he ; 

Nor  ever  did  he  speak  nor  looked  at  me, 
But  touched  his  lute  wherein  was  audible 
The  certain  secret  thing  he  had  to  tell : 

Only  our  mirrored  eyes  met  silently 

In  the  low  wave ;  and  that  sound  came  to  be 
The  passionate  voice  I  knew ;  and  my  tears  fell. 

And  at  their  fall,  his  eyes  beneath  grew  hers ; 
And  with  his  foot  and  with  his  wing-feathers 

He  swept  the  spring  that  watered  my  heart's  drouth. 
Then  the  dark  ripples  spread  to  waving  hair, 
And  as  I  stooped,  her  own  lips  rising  there 

Bubbled  with  brimming  kisses  at  my  mouth. 

This  is  a  dream  of  the  dead  woman  loved.  The  lover  finds 
himself  seated  with  the  god  of  love,  the  little  naked  boy 
with  wings,  as  the  ancients  represented  him,  at  the  edge  of 
a  spring  near  the  forest.  He  does  not  look  at  the  god  of 
love,  neither  does  the  god  look  at  him;  they  were  friends 
long  ago,  but  now — what  is  the  use"?  She  is  dead.  By 
the  reflection  in  the  water  only  he  knows  that  Love  is  look- 
ing down,  and  he  does  not  wish  to  speak  to  him.  But  Love 
will  not  leave  him  alone.  He  hears  the  tone  of  a  musical 
instrument,  and  that  music  makes  him  suddenly  very  sad, 
for  it  seems  like  the  voice  of  the  dead  for  whom  he  mourns. 
It  makes  his  tears  fall  into  the  water;  and  immediately, 
magically,  the  reflection  of  the  eyes  of  Love  in  the  water 
become  like  the  eyes  of  the  woman  he  loved.  Then  while 
he  looks  in  wonder,  the  little  god  stirs  the  surface  of  the 
water  with  wings  and  feet,  and  the  ripples  become  like  the 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  121 

hair  of  the  dead  woman,  and  as  the  lover  bends  down,  her 
lips  rise  up  through  the  water  to  kiss  him.  You  may  ask, 
what  does  all  this  mean*?  Well,  it  means  as  much  as  any 
dream  means;  it  is  all  impossible,  no  doubt,  but  the  impos- 
sible in  dreams  often  makes  us  very  sad  indeed — especially 
if  the  dead  appear  to  come  back  in  them. 

Another  example  of  regret,  very  beautiful,  is  the  sonnet 
numbered  ninety-one  in  this  collection.  It  is  called  "Lost 
on  Both  Sides." 

As  when  two  men  have  loved  a  woman  well, 

Each  hating  each,  through  Love's  and  Death's  deceit ; 

Since  not  for  either  this  stark  marriage-sheet 
And  the  long  pauses  of  this  wedding-bell ; 
Yet  o'er  her  grave  the  night  and  day  dispel 

At  last  their  feud  forlorn,  with  cold  and  heat ; 

Nor  other  than  dear  friends  to  death  may  fleet 
The  two  lives  left  that  most  of  her  can  tell : — 

So  separate  hopes,  which  in  a  soul  had  wooed 

The  one  same  Peace,  strove  with  each  other  long. 
And  Peace  before  their  faces  perished  since : 

So  through  that  soul,  in  restless  brotherhood, 
They  roam  together  now,  and  wind  among 
Its  bye-streets,  knocking  at  the  dusty  inns. 

The  comparison  is  of  the  hopes  and  aims  of  the  artist  to 
a  couple  of  men  in  love  with  the  same  woman — bitter  ene- 
mies while  she  lives,  because  of  their  natural  rivalry,  but 
loving  each  other  after  her  death,  simply  because  each  can 
understand  better  than  anybody  else  in  the  world  the  pain 
of  the  other.  Afterward  the  men,  once  rivals,  passed  all 
their  time  together,  wandering  about  at  night  in  search  of 
some  quiet  place,  where  they  can  sit  down  and  drink  and 
talk  together.  In  Rossetti's  time  such  quiet  places  were 
not  to  be  found  in  the  main  streets,  but  in  the  little  side 
streets  called  bye-streets.  After  this  explanation,  the  com- 
parison should  not  be  obscure.  The  artist  who  loves  does 
all  his  work  with  the  thought  of  the  woman  that  he  loves 


122  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

before  him ;  his  hope  to  win  fame  is  that  he  may  make  her 
proud  of  him ;  his  aims  are  in  all  cases  to  please  her.  After 
he  has  lost  her,  these  hopes  and  aims,  which  might  have 
been  antagonists  to  each  other  in  former  days,  are  now 
reconciled  within  him;  her  memory  alone  is  now  the  inspira- 
tion and  the  theme.  I  hope  you  will  notice  the  curious  and 
exquisite  value  of  certain  words  here.  "Stark,"  meaning 
stiff,  nearly  always  refers  to  the  rigidness  of  death;  it  is 
especially  used  of  the  appearance  and  attitude  of  corpses, 
and  its  application  in  this  poem  to  the  cover  of  the  marriage 
bed  is  quite  enough  to  convey  the  sense  of  death  without 
any  more  definite  observation.  Again  the  expression  "long 
pauses,"  referring  to  the  sound  of  the  church  bells,  makes 
us  understand  that  the  bells  are  really  ringing  a  funeral 
knell;  for  the  ringing  of  wedding  bells  ought  to  be  quick 
and  joyous.  It  might  seem  a  strange  contradiction,  this 
simile,  but  the  poet  has  in  his  mind  an  old  expression  about 
the  death  of  a  maiden:  "She  became  the  bride  of  Death." 
Thus  the  effect  is  greatly  intensified  by  the  sombre  irony  of 
the  simile  itself. 

We  might  extract  a  great  many  beauties  from  this  won- 
derful collection  of  sonnets;  but  time  is  precious,  and  we 
shall  have  room  for  only  another  quotation  or  two.  The 
following  is  one  to  which  I  should  like  especially  to  invite 
your  attention — not  only  because  of  its  strange  charm,  but 
also  because  of  the  curious  legend  which  it  recalls — a  legend 
which  we  have  already  studied: 

BODY'S  BEAUTY 

Of  Adam's  first  wife,  Lilith,  it  is  told 

(The  witch  he  loved  before  the  gift  of  Eve,) 

That,  ere  the  snake's,  her  sweet  tongue  could  deceive. 

And  her  enchanted  hair  was  the  first  gold. 

And  still  she  sits,  young  while  the  earth  is  old, 
And  subtly  of  herself  contemplative, 
Draws  men  to  watch  the  bright  web  she  can  weave. 

Till  heart  and  body  and  life  are  in  its  hold. 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  123 

The  rose  and  poppy  are  her  flowers ;  for  where 
Is  he  not  found,  O  Lilith,  whom  shed  scent 

And  soft-shed  kisses  and  soft  sleep  shall  snare? 
Lo !  as  that  youth's  eyes  burned  at  thine,  so  went 
Thy  spell  through  him,  and  left  his  straight  neck  bent, 

And  round  his  heart  one  strangling  golden  hair. 

The  reference  to  the  rose  and  the  poppy  may  need  some 
explanation.  The  rose  has  been  for  many  centuries  in 
Western  countries  a  symbol  of  love;  and  the  poppy  has 
been  a  symbol  of  death  and  sleep  from  the  time  of  the 
Greeks.  It  is  from  the  seeds  of  the  poppy  that  opium  is 
extracted.  The  Greeks  did  not  know  the  use  of  opium; 
but  they  knew  that  the  seeds  of  the  flower  produced  sleep, 
and  might,  in  certain  quantities,  produce  death.  We  have 
the  expression  "poppied  sleep"  to  express  the  sleep  of  death. 

A  final  word  must  be  said  about  Rossetti's  genius  as  a 
translator.  He  has  given  us,  in  one  large  volume,  the  most 
precious  anthology  of  the  Italian  poets  of  the  Middle  Ages 
that  ever  has  been  made — the  poets  of  the  time  of  Dante, 
under  the  title  of  "Dante  and  his  Circle."  This  magnifi- 
cent work  would  alone  be  sufficient  to  establish  his  supreme 
excellence  as  a  translator  of  poetry;  but  the  material  is 
mostly  of  a  sort  that  can  appeal  to  scholars  only.  Rossetti 
is  better  known  as  a  translator  through  a  very  few  short 
pieces  translated  from  French  poets,  chiefly.  Such  is  the 
wonderful  rendering  of  Villon's  "Ballad  of  Dead  Ladies," 
beginning 

Tell  me  now  in  what  hidden  way  is 

Lady  Flora,  the  lovely  Roman  ? 
Where's  Hipparchia,  and  where  is  Thais, 

Neither  of  them  the  fairer  woman  ? 
Where  is  Echo,  beheld  of  no  man, 

Only  heard  on  river  and  mere, — 
She  whose  beauty  was  more  than  human  ? — 

But  where  are  the  snows  of  yester-year? 

Even  Swinburne,   when  making  his  splendid  translations 


IM  STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI 

from  Villon,  refrained  from  attempting  to  translate  this 
ballad,  saying  that  no  man  could  surpass,  even  if  he  could 
equal,  Rossetti's  version.  The  burthen  is  said  to  be  espe- 
cially  successful   as   a  rendering  of   the   difficult   French 

refrain : 

Mais  ou  sont  les  neiges  d'antan? 

You  will  find  this  matchless  translation  almost  any- 
where, so  we  need  not  occupy  the  time  further  with  it;  but 
I  doubt  whether  you  have  noticed  as  yet  other  wonderful 
translations  made  by  this  master  from  the  French.  Such  is 
the  song  from  Victor  Hugo's  drama  "Les  Burgraves";  you 
will  not  forget  Rossetti's  translation  after  having  once 
read  it. 

Through  the  long  winter  the  rough  wind  tears; 
With  their  white  garments  the  hills  look  wan. 

Love  on :  who  cares  ? 

Who  cares  ?     Love  on  ! 
My  mother  is  dead ;  God's  patience  wears ; 
It  seems  my  chaplain  will  not  have  done ! 

Love  on :  who  cares  ? 

W^ho  cares  ?     Love  on  I 
The  Devil,  hobbling  up  the  stairs, 
Comes  for  me  with  his  ugly  throng. 

Love  on  :  who  cares  ? 

Who  cares?     Love  on. 

Another  remarkable  translation  from  the  same  drama  is 
that  of  the  song  beginning: 

In  the  time  of  the  civil  broils 
Our  swords  are  stubborn  things. 
A  fig  for  all  the  cities ! 
A  fig  for  all  the  kings! 


and  ending: 


Right  well  we  hold  our  own 
With  the  brand  and  the  iron  rod. 
A  fig  for  Satan,  Burgraves  ; 
Burgraves,  a  fig  for  God! 


STUDIES  IN  ROSSETTI  125 

But  even  more  wonderful  Rossetti  seems  when  we  go  back 
to  the  old  French,  as  in  the  translation  which  has  been 
called  "My  Father's  Close." 

Inside  my  father's  close 

{Fly  away  0  my  heart  away!) 
Sweet  apple-blossom  blows 
So  sweet. 

Three  kings'  daughters  fair, 

{Fly  away  0  my  heart  away!) 
They  lie  below  it  there 
So  sweet! 

Now  the  Old  French  of  the  first  stanza  will  show  you  the 
astonishing  faithfulness  of  the  rendering: 

Au  jardin  de  mon  pere, 

{Vole,  mon  coeur,  vole!) 
II  y  a  un  pommier  doux, 
Tout  doux. 

Besides  the  small  exquisite  things,  there  are  long  transla- 
tions from  mediaeval  writers,  French  and  Italian,  of  won- 
derful beauty.  Compare,  for  example,  the  celebrated  epi- 
sode of  Francesca  da  Rimini  in  Dante  (which  Carlyle  so 
beautifully  called  "a  lily  in  the  mouth  of  Hell"),  as  trans- 
lated by  Byron,  and  as  translated  by  Rossetti,  and  observe 
the  immeasurable  superiority  of  the  latter.  It  would  be 
very  pleasant,  if  we  had  time,  to  examine  Rossetti's  trans- 
lations more  in  detail ;  but  the  year  advances  and  we  must 
turn  to  an  even  greater  master  of  verse — Swinburne. 


CHAPTER  IV 
STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

A  GOOD  modem  critic  has  said  that  the  resemblance  be- 
tween Shelley  and  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  is  of  so 
astonishing  a  kind  that  it  tempts  one  to  believe  that  Swin- 
burne is  Shelley  in  a  new  body,  that  the  soul  of  the  drowned 
poet  really  came  back  to  life  again,  and  returned  to  finish 
at  Oxford  University  the  studies  interrupted  by  his  expul- 
sion at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  The  fancy  is  pretty; 
and  it  is  supported  by  a  number  of  queer  analogies.  Swin- 
burne, like  Shelley,  is  well  born;  like  Shelley,  he  has  been 
from  his  early  days  at  Eton  a  furious  radical;  like  Shelley, 
he  has  always  been  an  enem)^  of  Christianity;  and  like  Shel- 
ley, he  has  also  been  an  enemy  of  conventions  and  preju- 
dices of  every  description.  At  the  beginning  of  the  century 
Swinburne  would  certainly  have  been  treated  just  as  Byron 
and  Shelley  were  treated,  but  times  are  changed  to-day; 
the  public  has  become  more  generous  and  more  sensible,  and 
critics  generally  recognise  Swinburne  as  the  greatest  verse 
writer  English  literature  produced.  He  will  certainly  have 
justice  done  him  after  his  death,  if  not  during  his  life. 

If  Swinburne  were  Shelley  reborn,  we  should  have  to 
recognise  that  he  gained  a  good  deal  of  wisdom  from  the 
experiences  of  his  former  life.  He  is  altogether  an  incom- 
parably stronger  character  than  Shelley.  He  kept  his  radi- 
calism for  his  poetry,  and  never  in  any  manner  outraged  the 
conventions  of  society  in  such  matters  as  might  relate  to 
his  private  life.  He  is  also  a  far  greater  poet  than  Shelley 
— greater  than  Tennyson,  greater  than  Rossetti,  greater 
than  Browning,  greater  than  any  other  Englishman,  not 
excepting  Milton,  in  the  mastery  of  verse.  He  is  also  prob- 
ably one  of  the  greatest  of  scholars  among  the  poets  of  any 

126 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  127 

country,  writing  poetry  in  English  or  French,  in  Greek  and 
Latin.  For  learning,  there  are  certainly  few  among  the 
poets  of  England  who  would  not  have  been  obliged  to  bow 
before  him.  He  is  also  the  greatest  living  English  drama- 
tist— I  might  as  well  say  the  greatest  English  dramatist  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Except  the  "Cenci"  of  Shelley, 
there  is  no  other  great  drama  since  1800  to  be  placed  beside 
the  dramas  of  Swinburne;  and  the  "Prometheus  Unbound" 
by  Shelley  is  far  surpassed  by  Swinburne's  Greek  tragedy 
of  "Atalanta  in  Calydon."  Another  feature  of  Swinburne's 
genius  is  his  critical  capacity.  He  is  a  great  critic;  so  great 
that  he  has  been  able  to  make  his  enemies  afraid  of  him, 
as  well  as  to  help  to  distinction  struggling  young  men  of 
talent  whose  work  he  admires.  You  will  perceive  what 
force  there  must  be  in  the  man.  Born  in  1837,  he  has  never 
ceased  to  produce  poetry  from  the  time  of  his  University 
days,  and  he  still  writes,  with  the  result  that  the  bulk  of 
his  work  probably  exceeds  the  work  of  any  other  great  poet 
of  the  century.  If  he  be  indeed  the  reborn  Shelley,  it  is 
certain  that  Shelley  has  become  a  giant. 

I  may  have  surprised  you  by  saying  that  Swinburne  is 
the  greatest  of  all  our  poets.  But  understand  that  I  am 
speaking  of  poetry  as  distinguished  from  prose,  of  poetry  as 
rhythm  and  rhyme,  as  melody  and  measure.  By  greatest 
of  poets  I  mean  the  greatest  master  of  verse.  If  you  were 
to  ask  me  whether  Swinburne  has  as  great  a  quality  as 
Tennyson  or  as  Rossetti  or  as  Browning,  either  in  the  moral 
or  philosophical  sense,  I  should  say  no.  Greatest  of  all  in 
the  knowledge  and  use  of  words,  he  is  perhaps  less  than  any 
of  the  three  in  the  higher  emotional,  moral,  sympathetic, 
and  philosophical  qualities  that  give  poetry  its  charm  for 
even  those  who  know  nothing  about  the  art  of  words.  And 
of  all  the  Victorian  poets,  Swinburne  will  be  the  least  use- 
ful to  students  of  these  literary  classes.  The  extraordinary 
powers  that  distinguish  him  are  powers  requiring  not  only 
a  perfect  knowledge  of  English,  but  a  perfect  knowledge 


128  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

of  those  higher  forms  of  literary  expression  which  are  espe- 
cially the  outcome  of  classical  study.  Swinburne's  schol- 
arship is  one  of  the  great  obstacles  to  his  being  understood 
by  any  who  are  not  scholars  themselves  in  the  very  same 
direction ;  in  this  sense  he  would  be,  I  think,  quite  as  useless 
to  you  as  Milton  in  the  matter  of  form.  In  value  to  you 
he  would  be  far  below  Milton  in  the  matter  of  thought  and 
sentiment. 

There  are  several  ways  of  studying  poetry.  The  greater 
number  of  people  who  buy  the  books  of  poets,  and  who  find 
pleasure  in  them,  do  not  know  anything  about  the  rules  of 
verse.  Out  of  one  hundred  thousand  Englishmen  who  read 
Tennyson,  I  doubt  very  much  if  one  thousand  know  the 
worth  of  his  art.  English  University  students,  who  have 
taken  a  literary  course,  probably  do  understand  very  well; 
but  a  poet's  reputation  and  fortune  are  not  made  by  schol- 
ars, but  by  the  great  mass  of  half-educated  people.  They 
read  for  sentiment,  for  emotion,  for  imagination;  and  they 
are  quite  satisfied  with  the  pleasure  given  them  by  the  poet 
in  this  way.  They  are  improving  and  educating  themselves 
when  they  read  him,  and  for  this  it  is  not  necessary  that 
they  should  know  the  methods  of  his  work,  but  only  that 
they  should  know  its  results.  The  educators  of  the  great 
mass  of  any  people  in  Europe  are,  in  this  sense,  the  poets. 

The  other  way  of  studying  a  poet  is  the  scholarly  way, 
the  critical  method  (I  do  not  mean  the  philosophical 
method;  that  is  beside  our  subject) ;  we  read  a  poet  closelj, 
carefully,  observing  every  new  and  unfamiliar  word,  every 
beautiful  phrase  and  unaccustomed  term,  every  device  of 
rhythm  or  rhyme,  sound  or  colour  that  he  has  to  give  us. 
Our  capacity  to  study  any  poet  in  this  way  depends  a  good 
deal  upon  literary  habit  and  upon  educational  opportunity. 
By  the  first  method  I  doubt  whether  you  could  find  much  in 
Swinburne.  He  is  like  Shelley,  often  without  substance  of 
any  kind.  By  the  second  method  we  can  do  a  great  deal 
with  a  choice  of  texts  from  his  best  work.     I  think  it  better 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  129 

to  state  this  clearly  beforehand,  so  that  you  may  not  be  dis- 
appointed, failing  to  find  in  him  the  beautiful  haunting 
thoughts  that  you  can  find  in  Rossetti  or  in  Tennyson  or  in 
Browning. 

Here  I  must  digress  a  little.  I  must  speak  of  the  worst 
side  of  Swinburne  as  well  as  of  the  best.  The  worst  is 
nearly  all  in  one  book,  not  a  very  large  book,  which  made 
the  greatest  excitement  in  England  that  had  been  made 
since  the  appearance  of  Byron's  "Don  Juan."  It  is  the 
greatest  lyrical  gift  ever  given  to  English  literature,  this 
book;  but  it  is  also,  in  some  respects,  the  most  immoral  book 
yet  written  by  an  English  poet.  The  work  of  Byron,  at  its 
worst,  is  pure  and  innocent  by  comparison  with  the  work 
of  Swinburne  in  this  book.  It  is  astonishing  that  the  Eng- 
lish public  could  have  allowed  the  book  to  exist.  Probably 
it  was  forgiven  on  account  of  its  beauty.  Some  years  ago, 
I  remember,  an  excellent  English  review  said,  in  speaking 
of  a  certain  French  poem,  that  it  was  the  most  beautiful 
poem  of  its  kind  in  the  French  language,  but  that,  unfortu- 
nately, the  subject  could  not  be  mentioned  in  print.  Of 
course  when  there  is  a  great  beauty  and  great  voluptuous- 
ness at  the  same  time,  it  is  the  former,  not  the  latter,  that 
makes  the  greatness  of  the  work.  There  must  be  something 
very  good  to  excuse  the  existence  of  the  bad.  Much  of  the 
work  of  Swinburne  is  like  that  French  poem,  valuable  for 
the  beauty  and  condemnable  for  the  badness  in  it — and 
touching  upon  subjects  which  cannot  be  named  at  all.  Why 
he  did  this  work  we  must  try  to  understand  without  preju- 
dice. 

First,  as  to  the  man  himself.  We  must  not  suppose  that 
a  person  is  necessarily  immoral  in  his  lite  because  he  hap- 
pens to  write  something  which  is  immoral,  any  more  than 
we  should  suppose  a  person  whose  writings  are  extremely 
moral  to  be  incapable  of  doing  anything  of  a  vicious  or 
foolish  kind.  Shelley,  for  example,  is  a  very  chaste  poet — 
there  is  not  one  improper  line  in  the  whole  of  his  poetry; 


130  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

but  his  life  was  decidedly  unfortunate.  Exactly  the  re- 
verse happens  in  the  case  of  Swinburne,  who  has  written 
thousands  of  immoral  lines.  The  fact  is  that  many  per- 
sons are  apt  to  mistake  artistic  feeling  for  vicious  feeling,  and 
a  spirit  of  revolt  against  conventions  for  a  general  hatred  of 
moral  law.  I  must  ask  you  to  try  to  put  yourselves  for  a 
moment  in  the  place  of  a  young  student,  such  as  Swinburne 
was  at  the  time  of  these  writings,  and  try  to  imagine  how 
he  felt  about  things.  In  every  Western  boy — indeed,  I  may 
say  in  every  civilised  boy — there  are  several  distinct  periods, 
corresponding  to  the  various  periods  in  the  history  of  human 
progress.  Both  psychologically  and  physiologically  the  his- 
tory of  the  race  is  repeated  in  the  history  of  the  individual. 
The  child  is  a  savage,  without  religion,  without  tenderness, 
with  a  good  deal  of  cruelty  and  cunning  in  his  little  soul. 
He  is  this  because  the  first  faculties  that  are  developed 
within  him  are  the  faculties  for  self-preservation,  the  facul- 
ties of  primitive  man.  Then  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  and 
religious  feelings  are  quickened  within  him  by  home-train- 
ing, and  he  becomes  somewhat  like  the  man  of  the  Middle 
Ages — he  enters  into  his  medi£eval  period.  Then  in  the 
course  of  his  college  studies  he  is  gradually  introduced  to 
a  knowledge  of  the  wonderful  old  Greek  civilisation,  civ- 
ilisation socially  and,  in  some  respects,  even  morally  su- 
perior to  anything  in  the  existing  world;  and  he  enters  into 
the  period  of  his  Renaissance.  If  he  be  very  sensitive  to 
beauty,  if  he  have  the  aesthetic  faculty  largely  developed, 
there  will  almost  certainly  come  upon  him  an  enthusiastic 
love  and  reverence  for  the  old  paganism,  and  a  correspond- 
ing dislike  of  his  modern  surroundings.  This  feeling  may 
last  only  for  a  short  time,  or  it  may  change  his  whole  life. 
One  fact  to  observe  is  this,  that  it  is  just  about  the  time 
when  a  young  man's  passions  are  strongest  that  the  story 
of  Greek  life  is  suddenly  expounded  to  him  in  the  course 
of  his  studies;  and  you  must  remember  that  the  sesthetic 
faculty  is  primarily  based  upon  the  sensuous  life.     Now  in 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  131 

Swinburne's  case  we  have  an  abnormal  aesthetic  and  schol- 
arly faculty  brought  into  contact  with  these  influences  at  a 
very  early  age ;  and  the  result  must  have  been  to  that  young 
mind  like  the  shock  of  an  earth-quake.  We  must  also 
imagine  the  natural  consequence  of  this  enthusiasm  in  a 
violent  reaction  against  all  literary,  religious,  or  social  con- 
ventions that  endeavour  to  keep  the  spirit  of  the  old  pagan- 
ism hidden  and  suppressed  within  narrow  limits,  as  a 
dangerous  thing.  Finally  we  must  suppose  the  natural  ef- 
fect of  opposition  upon  this  mind,  the  effect  of  threats, 
sneers,  or  prohibitions,  like  oil  upon  fire.  For  young  Swin- 
burne was,  and  still  is,  a  man  of  exceeding  courage,  inca- 
pable of  fear  of  any  sort.  A  great  idea  suddenly  came  to 
him,  and  he  resolved  to  put  it  into  execution.  This  idea 
was  nothing  less  than  to  attempt  to  obtain  for  English 
poetry  the  same  liberty  enjoyed  by  French  poetry  in  recent 
times,  to  attempt  to  obtain  the  right  of  absolute  liberty  of 
expression  in  all  directions,  and  to  provoke  the  contest  with 
such  a  bold  stroke  as  never  had  been  dared  before.  The 
result  was  the  book  that  has  been  so  much  condemned. 

We  cannot  say  that  Swinburne  was  successful  in  this  at- 
tempt at  reform.  He  attempted  a  little  too  much,  and  at- 
tempted it  too  soon.  Even  in  his  own  time  the  great  French 
poet  Charles  Baudelaire  was  publicly  condemned  in  a  French 
court  for  having  written  verse  less  daring  than  Swinburne's. 
The  great  French  novelist  Flaubert  also  had  to  answer  in 
court  for  the  production  of  a  novel  that  is  now  thought  to 
be  very  innocent.  It  was  only  at  a  considerably  later  time 
that  the  French  poets  obtained  such  liberty  of  expression 
as  allowed  of  the  excesses  of  writers  like  Zola  or  of  poets 
like  Richepin.  Altogether  Swinburne's  fight  was  prema- 
ture. He  must  now  see  that  it  was.  But  I  should  not  like 
to  say  that  he  was  entirely  wrong.  The  result  of  absolute 
liberty  in  French  literature  gives  us  a  good  idea  of  what 
would  be  the  result  of  absolute  liberty  in  English  literature. 
Extravagances  of  immorality  were  followed  by  extrava- 


132  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

gances  of  vulgarity  as  well,  and  after  the  novelty  of  the 
thing  was  over  a  reaction  set  in,  provoked  by  disgust  and 
national  shame.  Exactly  the  same  thing  would  happen 
in  England  after  a  brief  period  of  vicious  carnival ;  the  Eng- 
lish tide  of  opinion  would  set  in  the  contrary  direction  with 
immense  force,  and  would  bring  about  such  a  tyrannical 
conservatism  in  letters  as  would  signify,  for  the  time  being, 
a  serious  check  upon  progress.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we 
cannot  do  in  English  literature  what  can  be  done  in  French 
literature.  Swinburne  might,  but  there  is  only  one  Swin- 
burne. The  English  language  is  not  perfect  enough,  not 
graceful  and  flexible  enough,  to  admit  of  elegant  immo- 
rality; and  the  English  character  is  not  rehned  enough.  A 
Frenchman  can  say  very  daring  things,  very  immoral  things, 
gracefully;  an  Englishman  cannot.  Only  one  Englishman 
has  approached  the  possibility;  and  that  Englishman  is 
Swinburne  himself. 

I  think  you  will  now  understand  what  Swinburne's  pur- 
pose was,  and  be  able  to  judge  of  it.  His  mistakes  were 
due  not  only  to  his  youth  but  also  to  his  astonishing  genius ; 
for  he  could  not  then  know  how  much  superior  in  ability 
he  actually  was  to  any  other  English  poet.  He  imagined 
that  there  were  many  who  might  do  what  he  could  do. 
The  truth  is  that  hundreds  of  years  may  pass  before  another 
Englishman  is  born  capable  of  doing  what  Swinburne  could 
do.  Men  of  letters  have  long  ago  forgiven  him,  because 
of  this  astonishing  power.  They  say,  "We  know  the  poems 
are  improper,  but  we  have  nothing  else  like  them,  and  Eng- 
lish literature  cannot  aiford  to  lose  them."  The  scholars 
have  forgiven  him,  because  his  worst  faults  are  always  schol- 
arly; and  a  common  person  cannot  understand  his  worst 
allusions.  Indeed,  one  must  be  much  of  a  classical  scholar 
to  comprehend  what  is  most  condemnable  in  the  first  series 
of  the  "Poems  and  Ballads."  Their  extreme  laxity  will 
not  be  perceived  without  elaborate  explanation,  and  no  one 
can  venture  to  explain — I  do  not  mean  in  a  university  class 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  133 

room  only,  I  mean  even  in  printed  criticism.  When  this 
was  attempted  by  the  poet's  enemies,  he  was  able  to  point 
out,  with  great  effect,  that  the  explanations  were  much  more 
immoral  than  the  poems. 

Now  in  considering  Swinburne's  poetry  in  a  short  course 
of  lectures,  I  think  it  will  be  well  to  begin  by  explaining  his 
philosophical  position;  for  every  poet  has  a  philosophy  of 
his  own.  As  I  liave  already  said,  there  is  less  of  this  visible 
in  Swinburne  than  in  the  other  Victorian  poets,  but  the  little 
there  is  has  a  particular  and  beautiful  interest,  which  we 
shall  be  able  to  illustrate  in  a  series  of  quotations.  I  am 
presuming  a  little  in  speaking  about  his  philosophy  because 
there  has  been  nothing  of  importance  written  about  his  phi- 
losophy, nor  has  he  himself  ever  made  a  plain  state- 
ment of  it.  In  such  a  case  I  can  only  surmise,  and  you 
need  not  consider  my  opinion  as  definitive.  Swinburne  is, 
like  George  Meredith,  an  evolutionist,  and  he  has  some- 
thing of  the  spiritual  element  in  him  which  we  notice  in 
Meredith  as  a  philosopher — but  always  with  this  difference, 
that  Meredith  makes  evolution  preach  a  moral  law,  and 
Swinburne  does  not.  But  here  we  notice  that  Swinburne's 
evolution  is  something  totally  different  from  Meredith's 
in  its  origin.  I  have  said  to  you  that  Meredith  expresses 
evolutional  philosophy  according  to  Herbert  Spencer;  I 
consider  him  the  greatest  of  our  philosophical  poets  for 
that  very  reason.  Swinburne  does  not  appear  to  have  felt 
the  influence  of  Herbert  Spencer;  he  seems  rather  to  re- 
flect the  opinions  of  Comte — especially  of  Comte  as  inter- 
preted by  Lewes,  and  perhaps  by  Frederic  Harrison.  He 
speaks  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity,  of  the  Divinity  of 
Man,  and  of  other  things  which  indicate  the  influence  of 
Comte.  Furthermore,  I  must  say,  being  myself  a  disciple 
of  Spencer,  that  Swinburne's  sociological  and  radical  opin- 
ions are  quite  incompatible  with  evolutional  philosophy  as 
expounded  by  Spencer.  Indeed,  Swinburne's  views  about 
government,   about  fraternity  and  equality,  about  liberty 


134.  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

in  all  matters  of  thought  and  action,  are  heresies  for  the 
strictly  scientific  mind.  The  great  thinkers  of  our  century 
have  exposed  and  overthrown  the  old  fallacies  of  the  French 
revolutionary  school  as  to  the  equality  of  men  and  the 
meaning  of  liberty  and  fraternity.  Swinburne  still  cham- 
pions, or  appears  to  champion,  some  of  the  erroneous  ideas 
of  Rousseau.  Otherwise  there  is  little  fault  to  be  found 
with  his  thoughts  concerning  the  ultimate  nature  of  things, 
except  in  the  deep  melancholy  that  always  accompanies 
them.  Meredith  is  a  grand  optimist.  Swinburne  is  some- 
thing very  like  a  pessimist.  There  is  no  joy  and  no  hope 
in  his  tone  of  speaking  about  the  mystery  of  death;  rather 
we  find  ourselves  listening  to  the  tone  of  the  ancient  Roman 
Epicureans,  in  the  time  when  faith  was  dying,  and  when 
philosophy  attempted,  without  success,  to  establish  a  re- 
ligion of  duty  founded  upon  pure  ethics. 

An  important  test  of  any  writer's  metaphysical  position 
is  what  he  believes  about  the  soul.  Swinburne's  idea  is 
very  well  expressed  in  the  prelude  to  his  "Songs  before  Sun- 
rise." A  single  stanza  would  be  enough  in  this  case;  but 
we  shall  give  two,  in  order  to  show  the  pantheistic  side  of 
the  poet's  faith. 

Because  man's  soul  is  man's  God  still, 
What  wind  soever  waft  his  will 

Across  the  waves  of  day  and  night 

To  port  or  shipwreck,  left  or  right. 
By  shores  and  shoals  of  good  and  ill ; 

And  still  its  flame  at  mainmast  height 
Through  the   rent  air   that   foam-flakes   fill 

Sustains  the  indomitable  light 
Whence  only  man  hath  strength  to  steer 
Or  helm  to  handle  without  fear. 

Save  his  own  soul's  light  overhead, 

None  leads  him,  and  none  ever  led. 
Across  birth's  hidden  harbour-bar, 
Past  youth  where  shoreward  shallows  are. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  135 

Through  age  that  drives  on  toward  the  red 

Vast  void  of  sunset  hailed  from  far, 
To  the  equal  waters  of  the  dead ; 

Save  his  own  soul  he  hath  no  star, 
And  sinks,  except  his  own  soul  guide, 
Helmless  in  middle  turn  of  tide. 

This  is  a  very  plain  statement  not  only  that  man  has  no 
god,  and  that  he  makes  his  own  gods,  but  that  he  never  had 
a  creator  or  a  god  of  any  kind.  He  has  no  divine  help, 
no  one  to  pray  to,  no  one  to  trust  except  himself.  So  far 
this  is  in  tolerable  accord  with  the  teaching  of  the  Buddha, 
"Be  ye  lights  unto  yourselves;  seek  no  refuge  but  in  your- 
selves." But  the  question  comes,  What  is  man's  soul?  Is 
it  divine*?  Is  it  part  of  the  universal  soul,  a  supreme  and 
infinite  intelligence'?  There  is  another  meaning  in  the  first 
line  of  the  first  stanza  which  I  quoted  to  you  about  man's 
soul  being  man's  god.  Some  verses  from  the  wonderful 
poem  called  "On  the  Downs"  will  make  the  meaning 
plainer. 

"No  light  to  lighten  and  no  rod 

To  chasten  men?     Is  there  no  God?" 

So  girt  with  anguish,  iron-zoned, 
Went  my  soul  weeping  as  she  trod 
Between  the  men  enthroned 
And  men  that  groaned. 

O  fool,  that  for  brute  cries  of  wrong 
Heard  not  the  grey  glad  mother's  song 

Ring  response  from  the  hills  and  waves, 
But  heard  harsh  noises  all  day  long. 

Of  spirits  that  were  slaves 

And  dwelt  in  graves. 

With  all  her  tongues  of  life  and  death, 
With  all  her  bloom  and  blood  and  breath. 

From  all  years  dead  and  all  things  done. 
In  the  ear  of  man  the  mother  saith, 

"There  is  no  God,  O  son, 

If  thou  be  none." 


136  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

This  is  the  declaration  of  a  belief  in  the  divinity  of  man, 
a  doctrine  well  known  to  students  of  Comte.  It  is  not  al- 
together in  disaccord  with  Oriental  philosophy;  you  must 
not  suppose  Swinburne  to  be  speaking  of  individual  di- 
vinity, but  of  a  universal  divinity  expressing  itself  in  human 
thought  and  feeling.  His  view  of  life  is  that  the  essential 
thing  is  to  live  as  excellently  as  possible,  but  we  must  not 
suppose  that  excellence  is  used  in  the  moral  sense.  Swin- 
burne's idea  of  excellence  is  the  idea  of  completeness.  His 
notions  of  right  and  wrong  are  not  the  religious  or  the  so- 
cial notions  of  right  and  wrong.  In  this  respect  he  some- 
times seems  to  think  very  much  like  the  German  philosopher 
Nietzsche.  Nevertheless  he  does  tell  us  that  the  real  spirit 
of  the  universe  is  a  spirit  of  love,  a  doctrine  at  which  Huxley 
would  certainly  have  laughed.  But  it  is  beautiful  doctrine 
in  its  way,  even  if  not  true,  and  admirably  suits  the  pur- 
poses of  poetry. 

I  think  that  I  need  not  say  much  more  here  about  Swin- 
burne's philosophy;  you  will  understand  that  he  is  at  once 
a  pantheist  and  an  evolutionist,  and  that  is  sufficient  for  our 
purposes.  But  it  is  necessary  to  remember  this  in  order 
to  understand  many  things  in  his  verse,  and  especially  in 
order  to  understand  some  of  his  extraordinary  attitudes  in 
condemning  what  most  men  respect,  and  in  praising  what 
most  men  condemn.  Remember  also  that  his  judgments, 
like  those  of  Nature,  are  never  moral;  they  are  not  always 
the  reverse,  but  they  are  founded  entirely  upon  aesthetic  per- 
ception. Those  who  praise  him  especially  are  men  in  re- 
volt like  himself.  Therefore  he  praised  Walt  Whitman,  at 
a  time  when  Walt  Whitman  was  being  condemned  every- 
where for  certain  faults  in  his  compositions;  therefore  he 
sang  the  praises  of  Baudelaire,  as  none  other  had  done 
before  him  (and  here  he  is  certainly  right) ;  therefore  he 
praised  Theophile  Gautier's  "Mademoiselle  de  Maupin," 
calling  it  "the  golden  book  of  spirit  and  sense";  therefore 
also  he  wrote  a  sonnet  praising  Burton's  translation  of  the 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  137 

Arabian  Nights,  which  made  a  great  scandal  in  England 
because  it  translated  all  the  obscene  passages  which  nobody 
else  had  ventured  to  put  into  English  or  French.  The  es- 
thetic judgment  in  all  these  cases  is  correct,  but  I  will  not 
venture  to  pronounce  upon  the  moral  judgment  any  further 
than  to  say  this,  that  Swinburne  delights  in  courage,  and 
that  literary  courage  in  his  eyes  covers  a  multitude  of  sins. 
Not  a  few,  however,  of  these  daring  songs  of  praise  are 
among  the  most  wonderful  triumphs  of  modern  lyric  verse. 
I  should  like,  for  example,  to  quote  to  you  the  whole  of 
his  ode  to  Villon,  but  I  fear  that  because  of  its  length,  and 
the  unfamiliarity  of  the  subject,  we  cannot  afford  the  time. 
I  will  quote  the  closing  stanza  as  a  specimen  of  the  rest, 
and  I  am  sure  that  you  will  see  its  beauty. 

Prince  of  sweet  songs  made  out  of  tears  and  fire, 
A  harlot  was  thy  nurse,  a  God  thy  sire ; 

Shame  soiled  thy  song,  and  song  assolled  thy  shame. 
But  from  thy  feet  now  death  has  washed  the  mire, 
Love  reads  out  first  at  head  of  all  our  quire, 

Villon,  our  sad  bad  glad  mad  brother's  name. 

Each  Stanza  ends  with  this  strange  refrain  of  "sad  bad 
glad  mad,"  adjectives,  which  excellently  express  the  change- 
ful and  extraordinary  character  of  that  poor  student  of 
Paris  with  whose  name  modern  French  literature  properly 
begins.  He  lived  a  terrible  and  reckless  life,  very  nearly 
ending  with  the  gallows;  he  was  an  associate  at  one  time 
of  princes  and  bishops,  at  another  time  of  thieves  and  pros- 
titutes; he  would  be  one  day  a  spendthrift,  the  next  day 
a  beggar  or  a  prisoner;  and  he  sang  of  all  these  experiences 
as  no  man  ever  sang  before  or  since.  Really  Swinburne's 
praise  in  this  case  is  not  only  just — it  represents  the  best 
possible  estimate  of  the  singer's  faults  and  virtues  com- 
bined. 

To  speak  in  detail  of  the  great  range  of  subjects  chosen 
by  Swinburne  is  not  possible  within  the  limits  of  this  lee- 


138  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

ture.  I  am  going  to  make  selections  from  every  part  of  his 
production,  except  the  dramatic,  as  well  as  I  can,  and  the 
selections  will  be  made  with  a  view  especially  to  show  you 
the  music  of  his  verse  and  the  brilliance  of  his  language. 
Most  of  his  poems  are  above  the  ordinary  lyrical  length 
rather  than  below  it,  and  I  hope  that  you  will  not  be  dis- 
appointed if  I  do  not  often  give  the  whole  of  a  poem,  for 
the  selections  will  contain,  I  am  sure,  the  best  part  of  the 
poem. 

Being  a  descendant  of  great  seamen,  Swinburne  had  every 
reason  to  sing  of  the  sea ;  and  he  has  sung  of  it  better  than 
any  one  else.  A  great  number  of  his  poems  are  sea-poems, 
or  poems  containing  descriptions  of  the  sea  in  all  its  moods, 
splendours,  or  terrors.  Sun,  sea,  and  wind  are  favourite 
subjects  with  him,  and  I  know  of  nothing  in  the  whole  of 
his  work  finer  than  his  description  of  the  wind  as  the  lover 
of  the  sea.  The  verses  I  am  going  to  quote  are  from  a 
great  composition  entitled  "By  the  North  Sea."  The  per- 
sonal pronoun  "he"  in  the  first  line  means  the  wind,  per- 
sonified. 

The  delight  that  he  takes  but  in  living 

Is  more  than  of  all  things  that  live : 
For  the  world  that  has  all  things  for  giving 

Has  nothing  so  goodly  to  give : 
But  more  than  delight  his  desire  is, 

For  the  goal  where  his  pinions  would  be 
Is  immortal  as  air  or  as  fire  is, 

Immense  as  the  sea. 

Though  hence  come  the  moan  that  he  borrows 

From  darkness  and  depth  of  the  night, 
Though  hence  be  the  spring  of  his  sorrows, 

Hence  too  is  the  joy  of  his  might; 
The  delight  that  his  doom  is  forever 

To  seek,  and  desire,  and  rejoice, 
And  the  sense  that  eternity  never 

Shall  silence  his  voice. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  139 

That  satiety  never  may  stifle 

Nor  weariness  ever  estrange 
Nor  time  be  so  strong  as  to  rifle 

Nor  change  be  so  great  as  to  change 
His  gift  that  renews  in  the  giving, 

The  joy  that  exalts  him  to  be 
Alone  of  all  elements  living 

The  lord  of  the  sea. 

What  is  fire,  that  its  flame  should  consume  her? 

More  fierce  than  all  fires  are  her  waves : 
What  is  earth,  that  its  gulfs  should  entomb  her? 

More  deep  are  her  own  than  their  graves. 
Life  shrinks  from  his  pinions  that  cover 

The  darkness  by  thunders  bedinned ; 
But  she  knows  him,  her  lord  and  her  lover, 

The  godhead  of  wind. 

This  titanic  personification  of  sea  and  wind  is  sublime, 
but  Swinburne  has  many  other  ways  of  personifying  wind 
and  sea,  and  sometimes  the  element  of  tenderness  and  love 
is  not  wanting.  Sometimes  the  sea  is  addressed  as  a  god- 
dess, but  more  often  she  is  addressed  as  a  mother,  and  some 
of  the  most  exquisite  forms  of  such  address  are  found  in 
poems  which  have,  properly  speaking,  nothing  to  do  with 
the  sea  at  all.  A  good  example  is  in  the  poem  called  "The 
Triumph  of  Time."  The  words  are  supposed  to  be  spoken 
by  a  person  who  is  going  to  drown  himself. 

O  fair  green-girdled  mother  of  mine, 

Sea,  that  art  clothed  with  the  sun  and  the  rain, 
Thy  sweet  hard  kisses  are  strong  like  wine. 

Thy  large  embraces  are  keen  like  pain. 
Save  me  and  hide  me  with  all  thy  waves. 
Find  me  one  grave  of  thy  thousand  graves. 
Those  pure  cold  populous  graves  of  thine. 

Wrought  without  hand  in  a  world  without  stain. 

We  shall  also  find  great  wonder  and  beauty  in  Swinburne's 
hymns  to  the  sun,  which  is  also  for  him,  as  for  the  poets 


140  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

of  old,  a  living  god,  and  which  certainly  is,  in  a  scientific 
sense,  the  lord  of  all  life  within  this  world.  The  best  ex- 
pression of  this  feeling  is  in  a  poem  called  "Off  Shore,"  de- 
scribing sunrise  over  the  sea,  and  the  glory  of  light. 

Light,  perfect  and  visible 

Godhead  of  God! 
God  indivisible, 
Lifts  but  his  rod, 
And  the  shadows  are  scattered  in  sunder,  and  darkness 
is  light  at  his  nod. 

At  the  touch  of  his  wand, 

At  the  nod  of  his  head 
From  the  spaces  beyond 

Where  the  dawn  hath  her  bed, 
Earth,  water,  and  air  are  transfigured,  and  rise  as  one 
risen  from  the  dead. 

He  puts  forth  his  hand, 

And  the  mountains  are  thrilled 
To  the  heart  as  they  stand 
In  his  presence,  fulfilled 
With  his  glory  that  utters  his  grace  upon  earth,  and 
her  sorrows  are  stilled. 

As  a  kiss  on  my  brow 

Be  the  light  of  thy  grace, 
Be  thy  glance  on  me  now 
From  the  pride  of  thy  place : 
As  the  sign  of  a  sire  to  a  son  be  the  light  on  my  face 
of  thy  face. 

Fair  father  of  all 

In  thy  ways  that  have  trod, 
That  have  risen  at  thy  call. 

That  have  thrilled  at  thy  nod. 
Arise,  shine,  lighten  upon  me,  O  Sun  that  we  see  to 
be  God. 

•  «••••«• 

Be  praised  and  adored  of  us 
All  in  accord. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  14.1 

Father  and  lord  of  us 
Always  adored, 
The  slayer,  and  the  stayer,  and  the  harper,  the  light 
of  us  all  and  our  lord. 

Swinburne  has  no  equal  in  enthusiastic  celebration  of  the 
beauties  of  sky  and  sea  and  wood,  of  light  and  clouds  and 
waters,  of  sound  and  perfume  and  blossoming.  Indeed, 
one  of  his  particular  characteristics,  a  characteristic  very 
seldom  found  in  English  masterpieces,  though  common  in 
the  best  French  work,  is  his  art  for  describing  odours — 
the  smell  of  morning  and  evening,  scents  of  the  seasons, 
scents  also  of  life.  We  shall  have  many  opportunities  to 
notice  this  characteristic  of  Swinburne,  even  in  his  descrip- 
tions of  human  beauty.  What  the  French  call  the  parfum 
de  jeunesse  or  odour  of  youth,  the  pleasant  smell  of  young 
bodies,  the  perfume  that  we  notice,  for  example,  in  the  hair 
of  a  healthy  child,  is  something  which  English  writers  very 
seldom  venture  to  treat  of;  but  Swinburne  has  treated  it 
quite  as  delicately  at  times  as  a  French  poet  could  do, 
though  sometimes  a  little  extravagantly.  You  must  think 
of  him  as  one  whom  no  quality  of  beauty  escapes,  whether 
of  colour,  odour,  or  motion;  and  as  one  who  believes,  I  think 
rightly,  that  whatever  is  in  itself  beautiful  and  natural  is 
worthy  of  song.  You  will  be  able  to  imagine,  from  what 
I  have  already  quoted,  how  he  feels  in  the  presence  of  wild 
nature.  How  he  considers  human  beauty  is  a  more  diffi- 
cult matter  to  illustrate  by  quotation,  at  least  by  quotation 
before  a  class.  But  I  shall  try  to  offer  some  illustrations 
from  the  "Masque  of  Queen  Bersabe."  You  all  know  what 
a  masque  is.  The  masque  in  question  is  a  perfect  imitation, 
for  the  most  part,  of  a  mediaeval  masque,  both  as  to  form 
and  language.  But  there  is  one  portion  of  it  which  is 
mediseval  only  in  tone,  not  in  language,  since  there  never 
lived  in  the  Middle  Ages  any  man  capable  of  writing  such 
verse.  It  is  from  this  part  that  I  want  to  quote.  But 
I  must  first  explain  to  you  that  the  name  Bersabe  is  only 


142  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

a  mediaeval  form  of  the  Biblical  name  Bathsheba,  the 
wife  of  Uriah,  whom  King  David  caused  to  be  murdered. 
It  is  an  ugly  story.  The  King  committed  adultery  with 
Bathsheba;  then  he  ordered  her  husband  to  be  put  into  the 
front  rank  during  a  battle,  in  such  a  place  that  he 
must  be  killed.  Afterwards  the  King  married  Bathsheba; 
but  the  prophet  Nathan  heard  of  the  wickedness,  and 
threatened  the  King  with  the  punishment  of  God.  This 
was  the  subject  of  several  mediaeval  religious  plays,  and 
Swinburne  adopted  it  for  an  imitation  of  such  play.  The 
first  part  of  his  conception  is  that  at  the  command  of  the 
prophet  the  ghosts  of  all  the  beautiful  and  wicked  queens 
who  ever  lived  come  before  Bathsheba,  to  reproach  her  with 
her  sin,  and  to  tell  her  how  they  had  been  punished  in  other 
time  for  sins  of  the  same  kind.  Each  one  speaks  in  turn; 
and  though  I  cannot  quote  all  of  what  they  said,  I  can 
quote  enough  to  illustrate  the  magnificence  of  the  work. 
Each  verse  is  a  portrait  in  words,  uttered  by  the  subject. 

CLEOPATRA 

I  am  the  queen  of  Ethiope. 
Love  bade  my  kissing  eyelids  ope 

That  men  beholding  might  praise  love. 
My  hair  was  wonderful  and  curled; 
My  lips  held  fast  the  mouth  of  the  world 

To  spoil  the  strength  and  speech  thereof. 
The  latter  triumph  in  my  breath 
Bowed  down  the  beaten  brows  of  death, 

Ashamed  they  had  not  wrath  enough. 

AHOLAH 

I  am  the  queen  of  Amalek. 

There  was  no  tender  touch  or  fleck 

To  spoil  my  body  or  bared  feet. 
My  words  were  soft  like  dulcimers, 
And  the  first  sweet  of  grape-flowers 

Made  each  side  of  my  bosom  sweet. 
My  raiment  was  as  tender  fruit 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  143 

Whose  rind  smells  sweet  of  spice-tree  root. 
Bruised  balm-blossom  and  budded  wheat. 


SEMIRAMIS 

I  am  the  queen  Semiramis. 

The  whole  world  and  the  sea  that  is 

In  fashion  like  a  chrysopras, 
The  noise,  of  all  men  labouring, 
The  priest's  mouth  tired  through  thanksgiving, 

The  sound  of  love  in  the  blood's  pause, 
The  strength  of  love  in  the  blood's  beat, 
All  these  were  cast  beneath  my  feet 

And  all  found  lesser  than  I  was. 

PASITHEA 

I  am  the  queen  of  Cypriotes. 

Mine  oarsmen,  labouring  with  brown  throats, 

Sang  of  me  many  a  tender  thing. 
My  maidens,  girdled  loose  and  braced 
With  gold  from  bosom  to  white  waist. 

Praised  me  between  their  wool-combing. 
All  that  praise  Venus  all  night  long 
With  lips  like  speech  and  lids  like  song 

Praised  me  till  song  lost  heart  to  sing. 

ALACIEL 

I  am  the  queen  Alaciel. 

My  mouth  was  like  that  moist  gold  cell 

Whereout  the  thickest  honey  drips. 
Mine  eyes  were  as  a  grey-green  sea ; 
The  amorous  blood  that  smote  on  me 

Smote  to  my  feet  and  finger-tips. 
My  throat  was  whiter  than  the  dove. 
Mine  eyelids  as  the  seals  of  love, 

And  as  the  doors  of  love  my  lips. 

ERIGONE 

I  am  the  queen  Erigone. 

The  wild  wine  shed  as  blood  on  me 

Made  my  face  brighter  than  a  bride's. 
My  large  lips  had  the  old  thirst  of  earth. 


144  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

Mine  arms  the  might  of  the  old  sea's  girth 
Bound  round  the  whole  world's  iron  sides. 

Within  mine  eyes  and  in  mine  ears 

Were  music  and  the  wine  of  tears, 
And  light,  and  thunder  of  the  tides. 

So  pass  the  strange  phantoms  of  dead  pride  and  lust  and 
power,  together  with  many  more  of  whom  the  descriptions 
are  not  less  beautiful  and  strange,  though  much  less  suit- 
able for  quotation.  I  have  made  the  citations  somewhat 
long,  but  I  have  done  so  because  they  offer  the  best  possible 
illustration  of  two  things  peculiar  to  Swinburne,  the  music 
and  colour  of  his  verse,  and  the  peculiar  mediseval  tone  which 
he  sometimes  assumes  in  dealing  with  antique  subjects. 
These  descriptions  are  quite  unlike  anything  done  by  Tenny- 
son, or  indeed  by  any  other  poet  except  Rossetti.  They 
represent,  in  a  certain  way,  what  has  been  called  Pre- 
Raphaelitism  in  poetry.  Swinburne  was,  with  Rossetti,  one 
of  the  great  forces  of  the  new  movement  in  literature.  Ob- 
serve that  the  illustrations  are  chiefly  made  by  compari- 
sons— that  the  descriptions  are  made  by  suggestion;  there 
is  no  attempt  to  draw  a  clear  sharp  line,  nothing  is  described 
completely,  but  by  some  comparison  or  symbolism  in  praise 
of  a  part,  the  whole  figure  is  vaguely  brought  before  the 
imagination  in  a  blaze  of  colour  with  strange  accompani- 
ment of  melody.  For  example,  you  will  have  noticed  that 
no  face  is  fully  pictured;  you  find  only  some  praise  of  the 
eyes  or  the  mouth,  the  throat  or  the  skin,  but  that  is  quite 
enough  to  bring  to  your  fancy  the  entire  person.  But  there 
is  another  queer  fact  which  you  must  be  careful  to  notice — 
namely,  that  no  comparison  is  modern.  The  language  and 
the  symbolism  are  Biblical  or  mediaeval  in  every  case.  The 
European  scholar  who  had  made  a  special  study  of  the  litera- 
ture of  the  Middle  Ages  would  notice  even  more  than  this; 
he  would  notice  that  the  whole  tone  is  not  of  the  later  but 
of  the  earlier  Middle  Ages,  that  the  old  miracle  plays,  the 
old  French  romances,  and  the  early  Italian  poets,  have  all 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  145 

contributed  something  to  this  splendour  of  expression.  It 
is  modern  art  in  one  sense,  of  course,  but  there  is  nothing 
modern  about  it  except  the  craftsmanship;  the  material  is 
all  quaint  and  strange,  and  gives  us  the  sensation  of  old  ta- 
pestry or  of  the  paintings  that  were  painted  in  Italy  before 
the  time  of  Raphael. 

Here  I  must  say  a  word  about  the  Pre-Raphaelite  move- 
ment in  nineteenth  century  literature.  To  explain  every- 
thing satisfactorily,  I  ought  to  have  pictures  to  show  you; 
and  that  is  unfortunately  impossible.  But  I  think  I  can 
make  a  very  easy  explanation  of  the  subject.  First  of  all 
you  must  be  quite  well  aware  that  the  literature  of  all  coun- 
tries seeks  for  a  majority  of  its  subjects  in  the  past.  The 
everyday,  the  familiar,  does  not  attract  us  in  the  same  way 
as  that  which  is  not  familiar  and  not  of  the  present.  Dis- 
tance, whether  of  space  or  time,  lends  to  things  a  certain 
tone  of  beauty,  just  as  mountains  look  more  beautifully 
blue  the  further  away  they  happen  to  be.  This  seeking  for 
beauty  in  the  past  rather  than  in  the  present  represents  much 
of  what  is  called  romanticism  in  any  literature. 

Necessarily,  even  in  this  age  of  precise  historical  knowl- 
edge, the  past  is  for  us  less  real  than  the  present;  time  has 
spread  mists  of  many  colours  between  it  and  us,  so  that  we 
cannot  be  sure  of  details,  distances,  depths,  and  heights. 
But  in  other  generations  the  mists  were  heavier,  and  the 
past  was  more  of  a  fairy-land  than  now;  it  was  more  pleas- 
ant also  to  think  about,  because  the  mysterious  is  attrac- 
tive to  all  of  us,  and  men  of  letters  delighted  to  write  about 
it,  because  they  could  give  free  play  to  the  imagination. 
Such  stories  of  the  past  as  we  find  even  in  what  have  been 
called  historical  novels,  were  called  also,  and  rightly  called, 
romances — works  of  imagination  rather  than  of  fact. 

But  still  you  may  ask,  why  such  words  as  romance  and 
romantic?  The  answer  is  that  works  of  imagination,  deal- 
ing with  past  events,  were  first  written  in  languages  de- 
rived from  the  Latin,  the  romance  languages;  and  at  a  very 


146  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

early  time  it  became  the  custom  to  distinguish  work  writ- 
ten in  these  modern  tongues  upon  fanciful  or  heroic  sub- 
jects, by  this  name  and  quality.  The  romantic  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  signified  especially  the  new  literature  of  fancy  as 
opposed  to  the  old  classical  literature.  Remember,  there- 
fore, that  this  meaning  is  not  yet  entirely  lost,  though  it  has 
undergone  many  modifications.  "Romantic"  in  literature 
still  means  "not  classical,"  and  it  also  suggests  imagination 
rather  than  fact,  and  the  past  rather  than  the  present. 

When  we  say  "mediae val"  in  speaking  of  nineteenth  cen- 
tury poetry,  we  mean  of  course  nineteenth  century  litera- 
ture having  a  romantic  tone,  as  well  as  reflecting,  so  far 
as  imagination  can,  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But 
what  is  the  difference  between  the  Pre-Raphaelite  and 
Mediceval?  The  time  before  Raphael,  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
period,  would  necessarily  have  been  mediaeval.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  term  Pre-Raphaelite  does  not  have  the  wide 
general  meaning  usually  given  to  it.  It  is  something  of  a 
technical  term,  belonging  to  art  rather  than  to  literature, 
and  first  introduced  into  literature  by  a  company  of  painters. 
The  Pre-Raphaelite  painters,  in  the  technical  sense,  were  a 
special  group  of  modern  painters,  distinguished  by  particu- 
lar characteristics. 

So  much  being  clear,  I  may  say  that  there  was  a  school 
of  painting  before  Raphael  of  a  very  realistic  and  remark- 
able kind.  This  school  came  to  existence  a  little  after  the 
true  religious  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  begun  to  weaken. 
It  sought  the  emotion  of  beauty  as  well  as  the  emotion  of 
religion,  but  it  did  not  yet  feel  the  influence  of  the  Renais- 
sance in  a  strong  way;  it  was  not  Greek  nor  pagan.  It 
sought  beauty  in  truth,  studying  ordinary  men  and  wpmen, 
flowers  and  birds,  scenery  of  nature  or  scenery  of  streets; 
and  it  used  reality  for  its  model.  It  was  much  less  romantic 
than  the  school  that  came  after  it;  but  it  was  very  great 
and  very  noble.  With  Raphael  the  Greek  feeling,  the  old 
pagan  feeling  for  sensuous  beauty,  found  full  expression. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  147 

and  this  Renaissance  tone  changed  the  whole  direction  and 
character  of  art.  After  Raphael  the  painters  sought  beauty 
before  all  things;  previously  they  had  sought  for  truth  and 
sentiment  even  before  beauty.  Raphael  set  a  fashion 
which  influenced  all  arts  after  him  down  to  our  own  time; 
for  centuries  the  older  painters  were  neglected  and  almost 
forgotten.  Therefore  Ruskin  boldly  declared  that  since 
Raphael's  death  Western  art  had  been  upon  the  decline 
and  that  the  school  of  painters  immediately  before  Raphael 
were  greater  than  any  who  came  after  him.  Gradually 
within  our  own  time  a  new  taste  came  into  art-circles,  a 
new  love  for  the  old  forgotten  masters  of  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries.  It  was  discovered  that  they  were, 
after  all,  nearer  to  truth  in  many  respects  than  the  later 
painters;  and  then  was  established,  by  Rossetti  and  others, 
a  new  school  of  painting  called  the  Pre-Raphaelite  school. 
It  sought  truth  to  life  as  well  as  beauty,  and  it  endeavoured 
to  mingle  both  with  mystical  emotion. 

At  first  this  was  a  new  movement  in  art  only,  or  rather 
in  painting  and  drawing  only,  as  distinguished  from  lit- 
erary art.  But  literature  and  painting  and  architecture  and 
music  are  really  all  very  closely  related,  and  a  new  literary 
movement  also  took  place  in  harmony  with  the  new  depar- 
ture in  painting.  This  was  chiefly  the  work  of  Rossetti, 
Swinburne,  and  William  Morris.  They  tried  to  make 
poems  and  to  write  stories  according  to  the  same  aesthetic 
motives  which  seem  to  have  inspired  the  school  of  painters 
before  Raphael,  This  is  the  signification  of  the  strange 
method  and  beauty  of  those  quotations  which  I  have  been 
giving  to  you  from  Swinburne's  masque.  They  represent 
very  powerfully  the  Pre-Raphaelite  feelings  in  English 
poetry.  I  know  that  this  digression  is  somewhat  long,  but 
I  believe  that  it  is  of  great  importance;  without  knowing 
these  facts,  it  would  be  impossible  for  the  student  to  un- 
derstand many  curious  things  in  Swinburne's  manner. 
Throughout  even  his  lighter  poems  we  find  this  curious  habit 


148  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

of  describing  things  in  ways  totally  remote  from  nineteenth 
century  feeling,  and  nevertheless  astonishingly  effective. 
Fancy  such  comparisons  as  these  for  a  woman's  beauty  in 
the  correct  age  of  Wordsworth : 

I  said  "she  must  be  swift  and  white, 
And  subtly  warm,  and  half  perverse. 
And  sweet  like  sharp  soft  fruit  to  bite, 
And  like  a  snake's  love  lithe  and  fierce." 
Men  have  guessed  worse. 

Or  take  the  following  extraordinary  description  of  a 
woman's  name,  perhaps  I  had  better  say  of  the  sensation 
given  by  the  name  Felise,  probably  an  abbreviation  of 
Felicita,  but  by  its  spelling  reminding  one  very  much  of  the 
Latin  word  felis^  which  means  a  cat : 

Like  colours  in  the  sea,  like  flowers, 

Like  a  cat's  splendid  circled  eyes 
That  wax  and  wane  with  love  for  hours, 

Green  as  green  flame,  blue-grey  like  skies, 

And  soft  like  sighs. 

The  third  line  refers  to  the  curious  phenomenon  of  the  en- 
larging and  diminishing  of  the  pupil  in  a  cat's  eye  accord- 
ing to  the  decrease  or  increase  of  light.  It  is  said  that  you 
can  tell  the  time  of  day  by  looking  at  a  cat's  eyes.  Now 
all  these  comparisons  are  in  the  highest  degree  offences 
against  classical  feeling.  The  classical  poet,  even  the  half- 
classical  poet  of  the  beginning  of  our  own  century,  would 
have  told  you  that  a  woman  must  not  be  compared  to  a 
snake  or  a  cat;  that  you  must  not  talk  about  her  sweetness 
being  like  the  sweetness  of  fruit,  or  the  charm  of  her  pres- 
ence being  like  the  smell  of  perfume.  All  such  comparisons 
seemed  monstrous,  unnatural.  If  such  a  critic  were  asked 
why  one  must  not  compare  a  woman  to  a  snake  or  a  cat, 
the  critic  would  probably  answer,  "Because  a  snake  is  a 
hateful  reptile  and  a  cat  is  a  hateful  animal."  What  would 
Ruskin  or  Swinburne  then  say  to  the  critic *?     He  would  say 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  149 

simply,  "Did  you  ever  look  at  a  snake*?  Did  you  ever 
study  a  cat'?"  The  classicist  would  soon  be  convicted  of 
utter  ignorance  about  snakes  and  cats.  He  thought  them 
hateful  simply  because  it  was  not  fashionable  to  admire  them 
a  hundred  years  ago.  But  the  old  poets  of  the  early  Middle 
Ages  were  not  such  fools.  They  had  seen  snakes  and  ad- 
mired them,  because  for  any  man  who  is  not  prejudiced,  a 
snake  is  a  very  beautiful  creature,  and  its  motions  are  as 
beautiful  as  geometry.  If  you  do  not  think  this  is  true, 
I  beg  of  you  to  watch  a  snake,  where  its  body  can  catch 
the  light  of  the  sun.  Then  there  is  no  more  graceful  or 
friendly  or  more  attractively  intelligent  animal  than  a  cat. 
The  common  feeling  about  snakes  and  cats  is  not  an  ar- 
tistic one,  nor  even  a  true  one;  it  is  of  ethical  origin,  and 
unjust.  These  animals  are  not  moral  according  to  our  no- 
tions; they  seem  cruel  and  treacherous,  and  forgetting  that 
they  cannot  be  judged  by  our  code  of  morals,  we  have 
learned  to  speak  of  them  contemptuously  even  from  the 
physical  point  of  view.  Well,  this  was  not  the  way  in  the 
early  Middle  Ages.  People  were  less  sensitive  on  the  sub- 
ject of  cruelty  than  they  are  to-day,  and  they  could  praise 
the  beauty  of  snakes  and  tigers  and  all  fierce  or  cunning 
creatures  of  prey,  because  they  could  admire  the  physical 
qualities  without  thinking  of  the  moral  ones.  In  Pre- 
Raphaelite  poetry  there  is  an  attempt  to  do  the  very  same 
thing.  Swinburne  does  it  more  than  any  one  else,  perhaps 
even  too  much ;  but  there  is  a  great  and  true  principle  of  art 
behind  this  revolution. 

Now  we  can  study  Swinburne  in  some  other  moods.  I 
want  to  show  you  the  splendour  of  his  long  verse,  verse  of 
fourteen  and  sixteen  syllables,  of  a  form  resurrected  by  him 
after  centuries  of  neglect ;  and  also  verse  written  in  imitation 
of  Greek  and  Roman  measures  with  more  success  than  has 
attended  similar  efforts  on  the  part  of  any  other  living  poet. 
But  in  the  first  example  that  I  shall  offer,  you  will  find  mat- 
ter of  more  interest  than  verse  as  verse.     The  poem  is  one 


150  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

of  Swinburne's  greatest,  and  the  subject  is  entirely  novel. 
The  poet  attempts  to  express  the  feeling  of  a  Roman  pagan, 
perhaps  one  of  the  last  Epicurean  philosophers,  living  at  the 
time  when  Christianity  was  first  declared  the  religion  of  the 
Empire,  and  despairing  because  of  the  destruction  of  the 
older  religion  and  the  vanishing  of  the  gods  whom  he  loved. 
By  law  Christianity  has  been  made  the  state-religion,  and 
it  is  forbidden  to  worship  the  other  gods;  the  old  man 
haughtily  refuses  to  become  a  Christian,  even  after  an  im- 
partial study  of  Christian  doctrine;  on  the  contrary,  he  is 
so  unhappy  at  the  fate  of  the  religion  of  his  fathers  that  he 
does  not  care  to  live  any  longer  without  his  gods.  And  he 
prays  to  the  goddess  of  death  to  take  him  out  of  this  world, 
from  which  all  the  beauty  and  art,  all  the  old  loved  cus- 
toms and  beliefs  are  departing.  We  cannot  read  the  whole 
"Hymn  to  Proserpine";  but  we  shall  read  enough  to  illus- 
trate the  style  and  feeling  of  the  whole.  At  the  head  of  the 
poem  are  the  words  Vicisti^  Galilczel — "Thou  hast  con- 
quered, O  Galilean" — words  uttered  by  the  great  Roman 
Emperor  Julian  at  the  moment  of  his  death  in  battle. 
Julian  was  the  last  Emperor  who  tried  to  revive  and  purify 
the  decaying  Roman  religion,  and  to  oppose  the  growth  of 
Christianity.  He  was,  therefore,  the  great  enemy  of  Chris- 
tianity. His  dying  words  were  said  to  have  been  addressed 
to  Christ,  when  he  felt  himself  dying,  but  it  is  not  certain 
whether  he  really  ever  uttered  these  words  at  all. 

I  have  lived  long  enough,  having  seen  one  thing,  that  love  hath 

an  end ; 
Goddess  and  maiden  and  queen,  be  near  me  now,  and  befriend. 
Thou  art  more  than  the  day  or  the  morrow,  the  seasons  that  laugh 

or  that  weep ; 
For  these  give  joy  and  sorrow ;  but  thou,  Proserpina,  sleep. 
Sweet  is  the  treading  of  wine,  and  sweet  the  feet  of  the  dove: 
But  a  goodlier  gift  is  thine  than  foam  of  the  grapes  or  love. 

After  speaking  to  the  goddess  of  death,  he  speaks  thus  to 
Christ: 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  151 

"Wilt  thou  yet  take  all,  Galilean*?  but  these  thou  shalt  not  take, 
The  laurel,  the  palms  and  the  paean,  the  breasts  of  the  nymphs  in 

the  brake ; 
Breasts  more  soft  than  a  dove's,  that  tremble  with  tenderer  breath; 
And  all  the  wings  of  the  Loves,  and  all  the  joy  before  death; 
All  the  feet  of  the  hours  that  sound  as  a  single  lyre, 
Dropped  and  deep  in  the  flowers,  with  strings  that  flicker  like  fire. 
More  than  these  wilt  thou  give,  things  fairer  than  all  these  things? 
Nay,  for  a  little  we  live,  and  life  hath  mutable  wings. 
A  little  while  and  we  die;  shall  life  not  thrive  as  it  may? 
For  no  man  under  the  sky  lives  twice,  outliving  his  day. 
And  grief  is  a  grievous  thing,  and  a  man  hath  enough  of  his  tears : 
Why  should  he  labour,  and  bring  fresh  grief  to  blacken  his  years? 
Thou  hast  conquered,  O  pale  Galilean ;  the  world  has  grown  grey 

from  thy  breath ; 
We  have  drunken  of  things  Lethean,  and  fed  on  the  fulness  of  death. 

Or,  in  other  words,  the  pagan  says:  "O  Christ,  you 
would  wish  to  take  everything  from  us,  yet  some  things 
there  are  which  you  cannot  take :  not  the  inspiration  of  the 
poet,  nor  the  spirit  of  art,  nor  the  glory  of  heroism,  nor  the 
dreams  of  youth  and  love,  nor  the  great  and  gracious  gifts 
of  time — the  beauty  of  the  seasons,  the  splendour  of  night 
and  day.  All  these  you  cannot  deprive  us  of,  though  you 
wish  to;  and  what  is  better  than  these*?  Can  you  give  us 
anything  more  precious*?  Assuredly  you  cannot.  For  these 
things  are  fitted  to  human  life;  and  what  do  we  know  about 
any  other  life*?  Life  passes  quickly;  why  should  we  make 
it  miserable  with  the  evil  dreams  of  a  religion  of  sorrow*? 
Short  enough  is  the  time  in  which  we  have  pleasure,  and  the 
world  is  already  full  enough  of  pain;  wherefore  should  we 
try  to  make  ourselves  still  more  unhappy  than  we  already 
are?  Yet  you  have  conquered;  you  have  destroyed  the 
beauty  of  life;  you  have  made  the  world  seem  grey  and  old, 
that  was  so  beautiful  and  eternally  young.  You  have  made 
us  drink  the  waters  of  forgetfulness  and  eat  the  food  of 
death.  For  your  religion  is  a  religion  of  death,  not  of  life; 
you  yourself  and  the  Christian  gods  are  figures  of  death, 
not  figures  of  life." 


15a  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

And  how  does  he  think  of  this  new  divinity,  Christ'?  As 
a  Roman  citizen  necessarily,  and  to  a  Roman  citizen  Christ 
was  nothing  more  than  a  vulgar,  common  criminal  executed 
by  Roman  law  in  company  with  thieves  and  murderers. 
Therefore  he  addresses  such  a  divinity  with  scorn,  even  in 
the  hour  of  his  triumph : 

O  lips  that  the  live  blood  faints  in,  the  leavings  of  racks  and  rods ! 

0  ghastly  glories  of  saints,  dead  limbs  of  gibbeted  Gods  I 

Though  all  men  abase  them  before  you  in  spirit,  and  all  knees  bend, 

1  kneel  not,  neither  adore  you,  but  standing,  look  to  the  end ! 

To  understand  the  terrible  bitterness  of  this  scorn,  it  is 
necessary  for  the  student  to  remember  that  a  Roman  citizen 
could  not  be  tortured  or  flogged  or  gibbeted.  Such  punish- 
ments and  penalties  were  reserved  for  slaves  and  for  bar- 
barians. Therefore  to  a  Roman  the  mere  fact  of  Christ's 
death  and  punishment — for  he  was  tortured  before  being 
crucified — was  a  subject  for  contempt;  accordingly  he  speaks 
of  such  a  divinity  as  the  "leavings  of  racks  and  rods" — that 
is,  so  much  of  a  man's  body  as  might  be  left  after  the  tor- 
turers and  executioners  had  finished  with  it.  Should  a 
Roman  citizen  kneel  down  and  humble  himself  before  that? 
A  little  while,  some  thousands  of  years,  perhaps,  Chris- 
tianity may  be  a  triumphant  religion,  but  all  religions  must 
die  and  pass  away,  one  after  another,  and  this  new  and  de- 
testable religion,  with  its  ugly  gods,  must  also  pass  away. 
For  although  the  old  Roman  has  studied  too  much  phi- 
losophy to  believe  in  all  that  his  fathers  believed,  he  be- 
lieves in  a  power  that  is  greater  than  man  and  gods  and 
the  universe  itself,  in  the  unknown  power  which  gives  life 
and  death,  and  makes  perpetual  change,  and  sweeps  away 
everything  that  man  foolishly  believes  to  be  permanent. 
He  gives  to  this  law  of  impermanency  the  name  of  the  god- 
dess of  death,  but  the  name  makes  little  difference;  he  has 
recognised  the  eternal  law.     Time  will  sweep  away  Chris- 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  153 

tianity  itself,  and  his  description  of  this  mighty  wave  of  time 
is  one  of  the  finest  passages  in  all  his  poetry : 

All  delicate  days  and  pleasant,  all  spirits  and  sorrows  are  cast 
Far  out  with  the  foam  of  the  present  that  sweeps  to  the  surf  of 
the  past: 

Where,  mighty  with  deepening  sides,  clad  about  with  the  seas  as 
with  wings. 

And  impelled  of  invisible  tides,  and  fulfilled  of  unspeakable  things. 

White-eyed  and  poisonous-finned,  shark-toothed  and  serpentine- 
curled. 

Rolls,  under  the  whitening  wind  of  the  future,  the  wave  of  the  world. 

The  depths  stand  naked  in  sunder  behind  it,  the  storms  flee  away ; 

In  the  hollow  before  it  the  thunder  is  taken  and  snared  as  a  prey ; 

In  its  sides  is  the  north-wind  bound ;  and  its  salt  is  of  all  men's  tears ; 

With  light  of  ruins  and  sound  of  changes,  and  pulse  of  years : 

With  travail  of  day  after  day,  and  with  trouble  of  hour  upon  hour ; 

And  bitter  as  blood  is  the  spray ;  and  the  crests  are  as  fangs  that 
devour: 

And  its  vapour  and  storm  of  its  steam  as  the  sighing  of  spirits  to  be ; 

And  its  noise  as  the  noise  in  a  dream ;  and  its  depth  as  the  roots  of 
the  sea : 

And  the  height  of  its  heads  as  the  height  of  the  utmost  stars  of  the 
air: 

And  the  ends  of  the  earth  at  the  might  thereof  tremble,  and  time 
is  made  bare. 

When  the  poet  calls  this  the  wave  of  the  world,  you 
must  not  understand  world  to  mean  our  planet  only,  but  the 
universe,  the  cosmos;  and  the  wave  is  the  great  wave  of 
impermanency,  including  all  forces  of  time  and  death  and 
life  and  pain.  But  why  these  terrible  similes  of  white  eyes 
and  poisonous  things  and  shark's  teeth,  of  blood  and  bit- 
terness and  terror  *?  Because  the  old  philosopher  dimly  rec- 
ognises the  cruelty  of  nature,  the  mercilessness  of  that  aw- 
ful law  of  change  which,  having  swept  away  his  old  gods, 
will  just  as  certainly  sweep  away  the  new  gods  that  have 
appeared.     Who  can  resist  that  mighty  power,  higher  than 


154.  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

the  stars,  deeper  than  the  depths,  in  whose  motion  even 
gods  are  but  as  bubbles  and  foam?  Assuredly  not  Christ 
and  his  new  religion.  Speaking  to  the  new  gods  the  Roman 
cries : 

All  ye  as  a  wind  shall  go  by,  as  a  fire  shall  ye  pass  and  be  past ; 
Ye  are  Gods,  and  behold,  ye  shall  die,  and  the  waves  be  upon  you 
at  last, 

Thy  kingdom  shall  pass,  Galilean,  thy  dead  shall  go  down  to  thee 
dead. 

Here  follows  a  beautiful  picture  of  the  contrast  between  the 
beauty  of  the  old  gods  and  the  uninviting  aspect  of  the 
new.  It  is  a  comparison  between  the  Virgin  Mary,  mother 
of  Christ,  and  Venus  or  Aphrodite,  the  ancient  goddess  of 
love,  bom  from  the  sea.  For  to  the  Roman  mind  the  Chris- 
tian gods  and  saints  wanted  even  the  common  charm  of 
beauty  and  tenderness.  All  the  divinities  of  the  old  Greek 
world  were  beautiful  to  look  upon,  and  warmly  human; 
but  these  strange  new  gods  from  Asia  seemed  to  be  not  even 
artistically  endurable.     Addressing  Christ,  he  continues: 

Of  the  maiden  thy  mother  men  sing  as  a  goddess  with  grace  clad 

around ; 
Thou  art  throned  where  another  was  king ;  where  another  was  queen 

she  is  crowned. 
Yea,  once  we  had  sight  of  another :  but  now  she  is  queen,  say  these. 
Not  as  thine,  not  as  thine  was  our  mother,  a  blossom  of  flowering  seas. 
Clothed  around  with  the  world's  desire  as  with  raiment  and  fair  as 

the  foam, 
And  fleeter  than  kindled  fire,  and  a  goddess  and  mother  of  Rome. 
For  thine  came  pale  and  a  maiden,  and  sister  to  sorrow ;  but  ours. 
Her  deep  hair  heavily  laden  with  odour  and  colour  of  flowers. 
White  rose  of  the  rose-white  water,  a  silver  splendour,  a  flame. 
Bent  down  unto  us  that  besought  her,  and  earth  grew  sweet  with 

her  name. 
For  thine  came  weeping,  a  slave  among  slaves,  and  rejected ;  but  she 
Came  flushed  from  the  full-flushed  wave,  and  imperial,  her  foot  on 

the  sea. 
And  the  wonderful  waters  knew  her,  the  winds  and  the  viewless  ways. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  155 

And  the  roses  grew  rosier,  and  bluer  the  sea-blue  stream  of  the  bays. 
Ye  are  fallen,  our  lords,  by  what  token?  we  wist  that  ye  should 

not  fall. 
Ye  were  all  so  fair  that  are  broken;  and  one  more  fair  than  ye  all. 

Why,  by  what  power,  for  what  reason,  should  the  old  gods 
have  passed  away?  Even  if  one  could  not  believe  in  them 
all,  they  were  too  beautiful  to  pass  away  and  be  broken, 
as  their  statues  were  broken  by  the  early  Christians  in  the 
rage  of  their  ignorant  and  brutal  zeal.  The  triumph  of 
Christianity  meant  much  more  than  the  introduction  of  a 
new  religion;  it  meant  the  destruction  of  priceless  art  and 
priceless  literature,  it  signified  the  victory  of  barbarism  over 
culture  and  refinement.  Doubtless  the  change,  like  all 
great  changes,  was  for  the  better  in  some  ways ;  but  no  lover 
of  art  and  the  refinements  of  civilisation  can  read  without 
regret  the  history  of  the  iconoclasm  in  which  the  Christian 
fanatics  indulged  when  they  got  the  government  and  the 
law  upon  their  side.  It  is  this  feeling  of  regret  and  horror 
that  the  poet  well  expresses  through  the  mouth  of  the 
Roman  who  cares  no  more  to  live,  because  the  gods  and 
everything  beautiful  must  pass  away.  But  there  is  one 
goddess  still  left  for  him,  one  whom  the  Christians  cannot 
break  but  who  will  at  last  break  them  and  their  religion, 
and  scatter  them  as  dust — the  goddess  of  death.  To  her 
he  turns  with  a  last  prayer: 

I  turn  to  her  still,  having  seen  she  shall  surely  abide  in  the  end ; 
Goddess  and  maiden  and  queen,  be  near  me  now  and  befriend. 

0  daughter  of  earth,  of  my  mother,  her  crown  and  blossom  of  birth, 

1  am  also,  I  also,  thy  brother ;  I  go  as  I  came  unto  earth. 

Thou  art  more  than  the  Gods  who  number  the  days  of  our  temporal 

breath; 
For  these  give  labour  and  slumber,  but  thou,  Proserpina,  death. 
Therefore  now  at  thy  feet  I  abide  for  a  season  in  silence.     I  know 
I  shall  die  as  my  fathers  died,  and  sleep  as  they  sleep ;  even  so. 
For  the  glass  of  the  years  is  brittle  wherein  we  gaze  for  a  span ; 
A  little  soul  for  a  little  bears  up  this  corpse  which  is  man. 


156  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

So  long  I  endure,  no  longer;  and  laugh  not  again,  neither  weep. 
For  there  is  no  God  found  stronger  than  death ;  and  death  is  a  sleep. 

The  third  line  from  the  end,  "a  little  soul  for  a  little,"  is  a 
translation  from  the  philosopher  Epictetus.  It  is  the  Epi- 
curean philosophy  especially  which  speaks  in  this  poetry. 
The  address  to  the  goddess  of  death  as  the  daughter  of 
earth,  cannot  be  understood  without  some  reference  to 
Greek  mythology.  Proserpina  was  the  daughter  of  the 
goddess  Ceres,  whom  the  ancients  termed  the  Holy  Mother 
— queen  of  the  earth,  but  especially  the  goddess  of  fruitful- 
ness  and  of  harvests.  While  playing  in  the  fields  as  a 
young  girl,  Proserpina  was  seized  and  carried  away  by  the 
god  of  the  dead,  Hades  or  Pluto,  to  become  his  wife. 
Everywhere  her  mother  sought  after  her  to  no  purpose;  and 
because  of  the  grief  of  the  goddess,  the  earth  dried  up, 
the  harvests  failed,  and  all  nature  became  desolate.  After- 
wards, finding  that  her  daughter  had  become  the  queen  of 
the  kingdom  of  the  dead,  Ceres  agreed  that  Proserpina 
should  spend  a  part  of  every  year  with  her  husband,  and 
part  of  the  year  with  her  mother.  To  this  arrangement 
the  Greeks  partly  attributed  the  origin  of  the  seasons. 

Incidentally  in  the  poem  there  is  a  very  beautiful  pas- 
sage describing  the  world  of  death,  where  no  sun  is,  where 
the  silence  is  more  than  music,  where  the  flowers  are  white 
and  full  of  strange  sleepy  smell,  and  where  the  sound  of 
the  speech  of  the  dead  is  like  the  sound  of  water  heard  far 
away,  or  a  humming  of  bees — whither  the  old  man  prays 
to  go,  to  rest  with  his  ancestors  away  from  the  light  of  the 
sun,  and  to  forget  all  the  sorrow  of  this  world  and  its 
changes.  But  I  think  that  you  will  do  well  to  study  this 
poem  in  detail  by  yourselves,  when  opportunity  allows.  It 
happens  to  be  one  of  the  very  few  poems  in  the  first  series 
of  Swinburne's  "Poems  and  Ballads"  to  which  no  reason- 
able exception  can  be  made;  and  it  is  without  doubt  one  of 
the  very  finest  things  that  he  has  ever  written.  I  could 
recommend  this  for  translation;  there  are  many  pieces  in 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  157 

the  same  book  which  I  could  not  so  recommend,  notwith- 
standing their  beauty.  For  instance,  the  poem  entitled 
"Hesperia,"  with  its  splendid  beginning: 

Out  of  the  golden  remote  wild  west  where  the  sea  without  shore  is, 
Full  of  the  sunset,  and  sad,  if  at  all,  with  the  fulness  of  joy. 

There  is  nothing  more  perfect  in  modern  literature  than  the 
beginning  of  this  poem,  which  gives  us  an  exact  imitation 
in  English  words  of  the  sound  of  the  Greek  hexameter 
and  pentameter.  But  much  of  this  work  is  too  passionate 
and  violent  for  even  the  most  indulgent  ears;  and  though 
I  think  that  you  ought  to  study  the  beginning,  I  should  never 
recommend  it  for  translation. 

The  comparison  of  the  wave  in  the  hymn  to  Proserpina 
must  have  given  you  an  idea  of  Swinburne's  power  to  deal 
with  colossal  images.  I  know  of  few  descriptions  in  any 
literature  to  be  compared  with  that  picture  of  the  wave; 
but  Swinburne  himself  in  another  poem  has  given  us  de- 
scriptions nearly  as  surprising,  if  not  as  beautiful.  There 
is  a  poem  called  "Thalassius,"  a  kind  of  philosophical  moral 
fable  in  Greek  form,  that  contains  a  surprise  of  this  kind. 
The  subject  is  a  young  man's  first  experience  with  love. 
Walking  in  the  meadows  he  sees  a  pretty  boy,  or  rather 
child,  just  able  to  walk — a  delicious  child,  tender  as  a  flower, 
and  apparently  needing  kindly  care.  So  he  takes  the  child 
by  the  hand,  wondering  at  his  beauty;  and  he  speaks  to  the 
child,  but  never  gets  any  reply  except  a  smile.  Suddenly, 
at  a  certain  point  of  the  road  the  child  begins  to  grow 
tall,  to  grow  tremendous;  his  stature  reaches  the  sky,  and 
in  a  terrible  voice  that  shakes  everything  like  an  earth- 
quake, he  announces  that  though  he  may  be  Love,  he  is 
also  Death,  and  that  only  the  fool  imagines  him  to  be  Love 
alone.  There  is  a  bit  both  of  old  and  of  new  philosophy 
in  this ;  and  I  remarked  when  reading  it  that  in  Indian  my- 
thology there  is  a  similar  representation  of  this  double  at- 
tribute of  divinity,  love  and  death,  creation  and  destruc- 


158  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

tion,  represented  by  one  personage.  But  we  had  better  read 
the  scene  which  I  have  been  trying  to  describe,  the  meeting 
with  the  child: 

That  well-nigh  wept  for  wonder  that  it  smiled, 
And  was  so  feeble  and  fearful,  with  soft  speech 
The  youth  bespake  him  softly;  but  there  fell 
From  the  sweet  lips  no  sweet  word  audible 
That  ear  or  thought  might  reach; 
No  sound  to  make  the  dim  cold  silence  glad, 
No  breath  to  thaw  the  hard  harsh  air  with  heat, 
Only  the  saddest  smile  of  all  things  sweet. 
Only  the  sweetest  smile  of  all  things  sad. 

And  so  they  went  together  one  green  way 

Till  April  dying  made  free  the  world  for  May ; 

And  on  his  guide  suddenly  Love's  face  turned, 

And  in  his  blind  eyes  burned 

Hard  light  and  heat  of  laughter ;  and  like  flame 

That  opens  in  a  mountain's  ravening  mouth 

To  blear  and  sear  the  sunlight  from  the  south. 

His  mute  mouth  opened,  and  his  first  word  came ; 

"Knowest  thou  me  now  by  name?" 

And  all  his  stature  waxed  immeasurable. 

As  of  one  shadowing  heaven  and  lightening  hell ; 

And  statelier  stood  he  than  a  tower  that  stands 

And  darkens  with  its  darkness  far-off  sands 

Whereon  the  sky  leans  red ; 

And  with  a  voice  that  stilled  the  winds  he  said: 

"I  am  he  that  was  thy  lord  before  thy  birth, 

I  am  he  that  is  thy  lord  till  thou  turn  earth ; 

I  make  the  night  more  dark,  and  all  the  morrow 

Dark  as  the  night  whose  darkness  was  my  breath: 

O  fool,  my  name  is  sorrow ; 

Thou  fool,  my  name  is  death." 

By  the  term  "darkness"  in  the  third  line  from  the  end  of 
the  above  quotation,  we  must  understand  the  darkness  and 
mystery  out  of  which  man  comes  into  this  world,  and  comes 
only  to  die.  This  monstrous  symbolism  may  need  some 
explanation,  before  you  see  how  very  fine  the  meaning  is. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  159 

Love,  that  is  the  attraction  of  sex  to  sex,  with  all  its  emo- 
tions, heroisms,  sacrifices,  and  nobilities,  cannot  be  under- 
stood by  the  young.  To  them,  love  is  only  the  physical 
and  the  moral  charm  of  the  being  that  is  loved.  In  man 
the  passion  of  love  becomes  noble  and  specialised  by  the 
development  in  him  of  moral,  aesthetic,  and  other  feelings 
that  are  purely  human.  But  the  attraction  of  sex,  that 
is  behind  all  this,  is  a  universal  and  terrible  fact,  a  tre- 
mendous mystery,  whose  ultimate  nature  no  man  knows  or 
ever  will  know.  Why*?  Because  if  we  knew  the  nature 
and  origin  of  the  forces  that  create,  we  could  understand 
the  whole  universe,  and  ourselves,  and  everything  that  men 
now  call  mystery.  But  all  that  we  certainly  do  know  is 
this,  that  we  come  into  the  world  out  of  mystery  and  go 
out  of  the  world  again  back  into  mystery,  and  that  no  mor- 
tal man  can  explain  the  Whence,  the  Why,  or  the  Whither. 
The  first  sensations  of  love  for  another  being  are  perhaps 
the  most  delicious  feelings  known  to  men ;  the  person  loved 
seems  for  the  time  to  be  more  beautiful  and  good  than  any 
one  else  in  the  world.  This  is  what  the  poet  means  by  de- 
scribing the  first  appearance  of  love  as  a  beautiful,  tender 
child,  innocent  and  dumb.  But  later  in  life  the  physical 
illusion  passes  away;  then  one  learns  the  relation  of  this 
seeming  romance  to  the  awful  questions  of  life  and  death. 
The  girl  beloved  becomes  the  wife;  then  she  becomes  the 
mother;  but  in  becoming  a  mother,  she  enters  into  the  very 
shadow  of  death,  sometimes  never  to  return  from  it.  Birth 
itself  is  an  agony,  the  greatest  agony  that  humanity  has  to 
bear.  We  come  into  the  world  through  pains  of  the  most 
deadly  kind,  and  leave  the  world  later  on  in  pain ;  and  what 
all  this  means,  we  do  not  know.  We  are  only  certain  that 
the  Greeks  were  not  wrong  in  representing  love  as  the  brother 
of  death.  The  Oriental  philosophers  went  further;  they 
identified  love  with  death,  making  them  one  and  the  same. 
One  cannot  help  thinking  of  the  Indian  statue  represent- 
ing the  creative  power,  holding  in  his  hand  the  symbol  of 


160  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

life,  but  wearing  around  his  neck  a  necklace  of  human  skulls. 

The  poem  that  introduces  the  first  volume  of  Swin- 
burne's poems,  as  published  in  America,  gave  its  name  to  the 
book,  so  that  thousands  of  English  readers  used  to  call  the 
volume  by  the  name  of  this  poem,  "Laus  Veneris,"  which 
means  the  praise  of  Venus.  I  do  not  think  that  there  is 
a  more  characteristic  poem  in  all  Swinburne's  work;  it  is 
certainly  the  most  interesting  version  in  any  modern  lan- 
guage of  the  old  mediaeval  story.  Without  understanding 
the  story  you  could  not  possibly  understand  the  poem,  and 
as  the  story  has  been  famous  for  hundreds  of  years,  I  shall 
first  relate  it. 

After  Christianity  had  made  laws  forbidding  people  to 
worship  the  old  gods,  it  was  believed  that  these  gods  still 
remained  wandering  about  like  ghosts  and  tempting  men 
to  sin.  One  of  these  divinities  especially  dreaded  by  the 
Christian  priests,  was  Venus.  Now  in  the  Middle  Ages 
there  was  a  strange  story  about  a  knight  called  Tannhauser, 
who,  riding  home  one  evening,  saw  by  the  wayside  a  beauti- 
ful woman  unclad,  who  smiled  at  him,  and  induced  him  to 
follow  her.  He  followed  her  to  the  foot  of  a  great  moun- 
tain; the  mountain  opened  like  a  door,  and  they  went  in, 
and  found  a  splendid  palace  under  the  mountain.  The 
fairy  woman  was  Venus  herself;  and  the  knight  lived  with 
her  for  seven  years.  At  the  end  of  the  seven  years  he  be- 
came afraid  because  of  the  sin  which  he  had  committed ;  and 
he  begged  her,  as  Urashima  begged  the  daughter  of  the 
Dragon  King,  to  let  him  return  for  a  little  time  to  the  world 
of  men.  She  let  him  go;  and  he  went  to  Rome.  There  he 
told  his  story  to  different  priests,  and  asked  them  to  obtain 
for  him  the  forgiveness  of  God.  But  each  of  the  priests 
made  answer  that  the  sin  was  so  great  that  nobody  except 
the  Pope  of  Rome  could  forgive  it.  Then  the  knight  went 
to  the  Pope.  But  when  the  Pope  heard  his  confession,  the 
Pope  said  that  there  was  no  forgiveness  possible  for  such  a 
crime  as  that  of  loving  a  demon.     The  Pope  had  a  wooden 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  161 

staff  in  his  hand,  and  he  said,  "Sooner  shall  this  dry  stick 
burst  into  blossom  than  you  obtain  God's  pardon  for  such 
a  sin."  Then  the  knight,  sorrowing  greatly,  went  back  to 
the  mountain  and  to  Venus.  After  he  had  gone,  the  Pope 
was  astonished  to  see  that  the  dry  staff  was  covered  with 
beautiful  flowers  and  leaves  that  had  suddenly  grown  out 
of  it,  as  a  sign  that  God  was  more  merciful  than  his  priests. 
At  this  the  Pope  became  sorry  and  afraid,  and  he  sent  out 
messengers  to  look  for  the  knight.  But  no  man  ever  saw 
him  again,  for  Venus  kept  him  hidden  in  her  palace  under 
the  mountain.  Swinburne  found  his  version  of  the  story 
in  a  quaint  French  book  published  in  1530.  He  repre- 
sents, not  the  incidents  of  the  story  itself,  but  only  the  feel- 
ings of  the  knight  after  his  return  from  Rome.  There  is 
no  more  hope  for  him.  His  only  consolation  is  his  love 
and  worship  for  her;  but  this  love  and  worship  is  mingled 
with  fear  of  hell  and  regret  for  his  condition.  Into  the 
poem  Swinburne  has  put  the  whole  spirit  of  revolt  of  which 
he  and  the  Pre-Raphaelite  school  were  exponents.  A  few 
verses  will  show  you  the  tone.     The  knight  praises  Venus: 

Lo,  this  is  she  that  was  the  world's  delight; 
The  old  grey  years  were  parcels  of  her  might ; 
The  strewings  of  the  ways  wherein  she  trod 
Were  the  twain  seasons  of  the  day  and  night. 

Lo,  she  was  thus  when  her  clear  limbs  enticed 
All  lips  that  now  grow  sad  with  kissing  Christ, 

Stained  with  blood  fallen  from  the  feet  of  God, 
The  feet  and  hands  whereat  our  souls  were  priced. 

Alas,  Lord,  surely  thou  art  great  and  fair. 
But  lo  her  wonderfully  woven  hair ! 

And  thou  didst  heal  us  with  thy  piteous  kiss ; 
But  see  now.  Lord ;  her  mouth  is  lovelier. 

She  is  right  fair ;  what  hath  she  done  to  thee  ? 
Nay,  fair  Lord  Christ,  lift  up  thine  eyes  and  see ; 

Had  now  thy  mother  such  a  lip — like  this  ? 
Thou  knowest  how  sweet  a  thing  it  is  to  me. 


162  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

This  calling  upon  God  to  admire  Venus,  this  asking  Christ 
whether  his  mother  was  even  half  as  beautiful  as  Venus,  was 
to  religious  people  extremely  shocking,  of  course.  And  still 
more  shocking  seemed  the  confession  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  poem  that  the  knight  does  not  care  whether  he  has 
sinned  or  not,  since,  after  all,  he  has  been  more  fortunate 
than  any  other  man.  This  expression  of  exultation  after 
remorse  appeared  to  reverent  minds  diabolical,  the  thought 
of  a  new  Satanic  School.  But  really  the  poet  was  doing 
his  work  excellently,  so  far  as  truth  to  nature  was  concerned; 
and  these  criticisms  were  as  ignorant  as  they  were  out  of 
place.  The  real  fault  of  the  poem  was  only  a  fault  of 
youth,  a  too  great  sensuousness  in  its  descriptive  passages. 
We  might  say  that  Swinburne  himself  was,  during  those 
years,  very  much  in  the  position  of  the  knight  Tannhauser; 
he  had  gone  back  to  the  worship  of  the  old  gods  because 
they  were  more  beautiful  and  more  joyous  than  the  Chris- 
tian gods;  we  may  even  say  that  he  never  came  back  from 
the  mountain  of  Venus.  But  all  this  poetry  of  the  first 
series  was  experimental;  it  was  an  expression  of  the  Renais- 
sance feeling  that  visits  the  youth  of  every  poet  possessing 
a  strong  sense  of  beauty.  Before  the  emotions  can  be  fully 
corrected  by  the  intellect,  such  poets  are  apt  to  offend  the 
proprieties,  and  even  to  say  things  which  the  most  liberal 
philosopher  would  have  to  condemn.  It  was  at  such  a 
time  that  in  another  poem  Swinburne  spoke  of  leaving 

The  lilies  and  languors  of  virtue 
For  the  raptures  and  roses  of  vice, 

— lines  that  immediately  became  famous.  It  was  also  at 
such  a  time  that  he  uttered  the  prayer  to  a  pagan  ideal : 

Come  down  and  redeem  us  from  virtue. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  if  all  poets  were  to  wait  for  the  age 
of  wisdom  before  they  began  to  sing,  we  should  miss  a  thou- 
sand beautiful  things  of  which  only  youth  is  capable,  where- 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  163 

fore  it  were  best  to  forgive  the  eccentricities  for  the  sake 
of  the  incomparable  merits.  For  example,  in  the  very  poem 
from  which  these  quotations  have  been  made,  we  have  such 
splendid  verses  as  these,  referring  to  the  worship  of  Venus 
in  the  time  of  Nero: 

Dost  thou  dream,  in  a  respite  of  slumber. 

In  a  lull  of  the  fires  of  thy  life, 
Of  the  days  without  name,  without  number, 

When  thy  will  stung  the  world  into  strife ; 
When,  a  goddess,  the  pulse  of  thy  passion 

Smote  kings  as  they  revelled  in  Rome, 
And  they  hailed  thee  re-risen,  O  Thalassian, 

Foam-white,  from  the  foam^ 

Thalassian  means  the  sea-born,  derived  from  the  Greek  word 
Thalatta,  the  sea.  Here  Swinburne  might  be  referring  to 
the  times  of  the  Triumvirate,  when  Cleopatra  succeeded  in 
bewitching  the  great  captain  Csesar  and  the  great  captain 
Antony,  and  set  the  world  fighting  for  her  sake.  Then  we 
have  a  reference  to  the  great  games  in  Rome,  the  splendour 
and  the  horror  of  the  amphitheatre: 

On  sands  by  the  storm  never  shaken. 

Nor  wet  from  the  washing  of  tides ; 
Nor  by  foam  of  the  waves  overtaken. 

Nor  winds  that  the  thunder  bestrides ; 
But  red  from  the  print  of  thy  paces. 

Made  smooth  for  the  world  and  its  lords, 
Ringed  round  with  a  flame  of  fair  faces, 

And  splendid  with  swords. 

The  floor  of  the  amphitheatre  was  covered  with  sand,  which 
absorbed  the  blood  of  the  combatants.  But  you  will  ask 
what  had  the  games  to  do  with  the  goddess  *?  All  the  Roman 
festivities  of  this  kind  were,  to  a  certain  extent,  considered 
as  religious  celebrations ;  they  formed  parts  of  holiday  cere- 
mony. 

There  the  gladiator  pale  for  thy  pleasure, 
Drew  bitter  and  perilous  breath; 


164.  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

There  torments  laid  hold  on  the  treasure 

Of  limbs  too  delicious  for  death ; 
When  thy  gardens  were  lit  with  live  torches ; 

When  the  world  was  a  steed  for  thy  rein; 
When  the  nations  lay  prone  in  thy  porches, 

Our  Lady  of  Pain. 

When  with  flame  all  around  him  aspirant. 

Stood  flushed,  as  a  harp-player  stands. 
The  implacable  beautiful  tyrant 

Rose-crowned,  having  death  in  his  hands; 
And  a  sound  as  the  sound  of  loud  water 

Smote  far  through  the  flight  of  the  fires, 
And  mixed  with  the  lightning  of  slaughter 

A  thunder  of  lyres. 

The  reference  here  in  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  lines  of 
the  first  of  the  above  stanzas  is  to  the  torture  of  the  Chris- 
tians by  Nero  in  the  amphitheatre.  By  "limbs  too  delicious 
for  death"  the  poet  refers  to  the  torture  of  young  girls.  The 
"live  torches"  refers  to  Nero's  cruelty  in  having  hundreds 
of  Christians  wrapped  about  with  combustible  material,  tied 
to  lofty  poles,  and  set  on  fire,  to  serve  as  torches  during  a 
great  festival  which  he  gave  in  the  gardens  of  his  palace. 
The  second  stanza  represents  him  as  the  destroyer  of  Rome. 
It  is  said  that  he  secretly  had  the  city  set  on  fire  in  a  dozen 
different  places,  in  order  that  he  might  be  thereby  enabled 
to  imagine  the  scene  of  the  burning  of  Troy,  as  described 
by  Homer.  He  wanted  to  write  a  poem  about  it;  and  it 
is  said  that  while  the  city  was  burning,  he  watched  it  from 
a  high  place,  at  the  same  time  composing  and  singing  a 
poem  on  the  spectacle.  The  "flight  of  fires"  refers  of 
course  to  the  spreading  of  fire  through  Rome.  The  "light- 
ning of  slaughter"  means  the  flashing  of  swords  in  the  work 
of  killing,  and  is  explained  by  the  legend  that  Nero  sent 
soldiers  to  kill  anybody  who  tried  to  put  out  the  fire.  Any- 
thing was  possible  in  the  times  of  which  Swinburne  sings; 
for  the  world  was  then  governed  by  emperors  who  were 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  165 

not  simply  wicked  but  mad.  But  what  I  wish  to  point 
out  is  that  while  a  poet  can  write  verses  so  splendid  in  sound 
and  colour  as  those  that  I  have  quoted,  even  such  a  composi- 
tion as  "Dolores"  must  be  preserved,  with  all  its  good  and 
bad,  among  the  treasures  of  English  verse. 

In  spite  of  his  radicalism  in  the  matter  of  religion  and  of 
ethics,  the  Bible  has  had  no  more  devoted  student  than 
Swinburne;  he  has  not  only  appreciated  all  the  beauties  of 
its  imagery  and  the  strength  of  its  wonderful  English,  but 
he  has  used  for  the  subjects  of  not  a  few  of  his  pieces,  and 
his  more  daring  pieces,  Biblical  subjects.  The  extraordinary 
composition  "Aholibah"  was  inspired  by  a  study  of  Ezekiel; 
unfortunately  this  is  one  of  the  pieces  especially  inappropri- 
ate to  the  classroom.  "A  Litany"  will  suit  our  purpose  bet- 
ter. It  consists  of  a  number  of  Biblical  prophecies,  from 
Isaiah  and  other  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  arranged  into 
a  kind  of  dramatic  chorus.  God  is  made  the  chief  speaker, 
and  he  is  answered  by  his  people.  This  is  a  kind  of  imita- 
tion of  a  certain  part  of  the  old  church-service,  in  which 
one  band  of  singers  answers  another,  such  singing  being 
called  "antiphonal,"  and  the  different  parts,  "antiphones." 
There  is  very  little  English  verse  written  in  the  measure 
which  Swinburne  has  adopted  for  this  study,  and  I  hope 
that  you  will  notice  the  peculiar  rhythmic  force  of  the 
stanzas.     We  need  quote  only  a  few. 

All  the  bright  lights  of  heaven 

I  will  make  dark  over  thee ; 
One  night  shall  be  as  seven 

That  its  skirts  may  cover  thee; 
I  will  send  on  thy  strong  men  a  sword. 

On  thy  remnant  a  rod : 
Ye  shall  know  that  I  am  the  Lord, 

Saith  the  Lord  God. 

And  the  people  answer: 

All  the  bright  lights  of  heaven 
Thou  hast  made  dark  over  us ; 


166  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

One  night  has  been  as  seven, 

That  its  skirt  might  cover  us ; 
Thou  hast  sent  on  our  strong  men  a  sword. 

On  our  remnant  a  rod ; 
We  know  that  thou  art  the  Lord, 

0  Lord  our  God. 

But  this  submission  is  not  enough;  for  the  Lord  replies: 

As  the  tresses  and  wings  of  the  wind 

Are  scattered  and  shaken, 
I  will  scatter  all  them  that  have  sinned. 

There  shall  none  be  taken ; 
As  a  sower  that  scattereth  seed. 

So  will  I  scatter  them; 
As  one  breaketh  and  shattereth  a  reed, 

1  will  break  and  shatter  them. 

The  antiphone  is: 

As  the  wings  and  the  locks  of  the  wind 

Are  scattered  and  shaken, 
Thou  hast  scattered  all  them  that  have  sinned ; 

There  was  no  man  taken, 
As  a  sower  that  scattereth  seed, 

So  hast  thou  scattered  us ; 
As  one  breaketh  and  shattereth  a  reed, 

Thou  hast  broken  and  shattered  us. 

Observe  that,  simple  as  this  versification  looks,  there  is 
nothing  more  difficult.  With  the  simplest  possible  words, 
the  greatest  possible  amount  of  sound  and  force  is  here 
obtained.  There  are  many  other  stanzas,  and  a  noteworthy 
fact  is  that  very  few  words  of  Latin  origin  are  used.  Most 
of  the  words  are  Anglo-Saxon;  perhaps  that  is  why  the  lan- 
guage is  so  sonorous  and  strong.  But  when  the  poet  does 
use  a  word  of  Latin  origin,  the  result  is  simply  splendid: 

Ye  whom  your  lords  loved  well. 

Putting  silver  and  gold  on  you. 
The  inevitable  hell 

Shall  surely  take  hold  on  you; 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  167 

Your  gold  shall  be  for  a  token, 

Your  staff  for  a  rod ; 
With  the  breaking  of  bands  ye  are  broken, 

Saith  the  Lord  God. 

The  use  of  the  Latin  adjective  "inevitable"  here  gives  an 
extraordinary  effect,  the  main  accent  of  the  line  coming 
on  the  second  syllable  of  the  word.  But,  as  if  to  show  his 
power,  in  the  antiphonal  response  the  poet  does  not  repeat 
this  effect,  but  goes  back  to  the  simple  Anglo-Saxon  with 
astonishing  success: 


*& 


We  whom  the  world  loved  well, 

Laying  silver  and  gold  on  us, 
The  kingdom  of  death  and  of  hell 

Riseth  up  to  take  hold  on  us ; 
Our  gold  is  turned  to  a  token, 

Our  staff  to  a  rod ; 
■  Yet  shalt  thou  bind  them  up  that  were  broken, 

O  Lord  our  God  I 

Here  the  substitution  of  these  much  simpler  words  gives 
nearly  as  fine  an  effect  of  sound  and  a  grander  effect  of 
sense  because  of  the  grim  power  of  the  words  themselves. 

Besides  studies  in  Biblical  English,  the  poet  has  made 
a  number  of  studies  in  the  Old  Anglo-Saxon  poets,  most 
of  whom  were  religious  men  who  liked  sad  and  terrible  sub- 
jects. In  the  poem  entitled  'After  Death"  we  have  an  ex- 
ample of  this  Anglo-Saxon  feeling  combined  with  the  plain 
strength  of  a  later  form  of  language,  chiefly  Middle  English, 
with  here  and  there  a  ver\-  quaint  use  of  grammar.  It  was 
common  in  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  to  depict  the  horrors  of  the 
grave.  Here  we  have  a  dead  man  talking  to  his  own  cof- 
fin, and  the  coffin  answers  him  horribly : 

The  four  boards  of  the  coffin  lid 
Heard  all  the  dead  man  did. 

"I  had  fair  coins  red  and  white, 
And  my  name  was  as  great  light; 


168  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

"I  had  fair  clothes  green  and  red. 
And  strong  gold  bound  round  my  head. 

"But  no  meat  comes  in  my  mouth. 
Now  I  fare  as  the  worm  doth; 

"And  no  gold  binds  in  my  hair, 
Now  I  fare  as  the  blind  fare. 

"My  live  thews  were  of  great  strength. 
Now  am  I  waxen  a  span's  length ; 

"My  live  sides  were  full  of  lust. 
Now  they  are  dried  with  dust." 

The  first  board  spake  and  said : 
"Is  it  best  eating  flesh  or  bread?" 

The  second  answered  it: 

"Is  wine  or  honey  the  more  sweet?" 

The  third  board  spake  and  said: 

"Is  red  gold  worth  a  girl's  gold  head?" 

The  fourth  made  answer,  thus: 

"All  these  things  are  as  one  with  us." 

The  dead  man  asked  of  them: 

"Is  the  green  land  stained  brown  with  flame  ? 

"Have  they  hewn  my  son  for  beasts  to  eat, 
And  my  wife's  body  for  beasts'  meat? 

"Have  they  boiled  my  maid  in  a  brass  pan, 
And  built  a  gallows  to  hang  my  man  ?" 

The  boards  said  to  him: 

"This  is  a  lewd  thing  that  ye  deem. 

■"Your  wife  has  gotten  a  golden  bed; 
All  the  sheets  are  sewn  with  red. 

"Your  son  has  gotten  a  coat  of  silk. 
The  sleeves  are  soft  as  curded  milk. 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  169 

"Your  maid  has  gotten  a  kirtle  new, 
All  the  skirt  has  braids  of  blue. 

"Your  man  has  gotten  both  ring  and  glove, 
Wrought  well  for  eyes  to  love." 

The  dead  man  answered  thus : 
"What  good  gift  shall  God  give  us?" 

The  boards  answered  anon: 
"Flesh  to  feed  hell's  worm  upon." 

I  doubt  very  much  whether  a  more  terrible  effect  could  be 
produced  by  any  change  of  language.  The  poem  is  an  ex- 
cellent illustration  of  the  force  of  the  Old  English,  with- 
out admixture  of  any  sort.  Do  not  think  that  this  is  simple 
and  easy  work;  perhaps  no  other  living  man  could  have 
done  it  equally  well.  It  is  not  only  in  these  simple  forms, 
however,  that  Swinburne  shows  us  the  results  of  his  Old 
English  studies.  Two  of  the  most  celebrated  among  his 
early  poems,  "The  Triumph  of  Time"  and  the  poem  on  the 
swallow,  "Itylus,"  are  imitations  of  very  old  forms  of  Eng- 
lish verse,  though  the  language  is  luxurious  and  new.  I 
have  already  given  you  a  quotation  from  the  former  poem, 
describing  the  poet's  love  of  the  sea.  I  now  cite  a  single 
stanza  of  "Itylus." 

Swallow,  my  sister,  O  sister  swallow, 

How  can  thine  heart  be  full  of  the  spring  ? 
A  thousand  summers  are  over  and  dead. 
What  hast  thou  found  in  the  spring  to  follow? 
What  hast  thou  found  in  thine  heart  to  sing  ? 
What  wilt  thou  do  when  the  summer  is  shed? 

Probably  Swinburne  found  this  measure  in  early  Middle 
English  poetry;  it  was  used  by  the  old  poet  Hampole  in  his 
"Prick  of  Conscience."  After  it  had  been  forgotten  for 
five  hundred  years,  Swinburne  brought  it  to  life  again. 
Something  very  close  to  it  forms  the  splendid  and  beauti- 
ful chorus  of  "Atalanta  in  Calydon:" 


170  STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE 

When  the  hounds  of  spring  are  on  winter's  traces, 

The  mother  of  months  in  meadow  or  plain 
Fills  the  shadows  and  windy  places 

With  lisp  of  leaves  and  ripple  of  rain ; 
And  the  brown  bright  nightingale  amorous 

Is  half  assuaged  for  Itylus, 
For  the  Thracian  ships  and  the  foreign  faces, 

The  tongueless  vigil,  and  all  the  pain. 

Here  as  in  all  other  cases,  however,  the  poet  has  far  sur- 
passed his  model.  The  measures  which  he  revived  take 
new  life  only  because  of  the  extraordinary  charm  which 
he  has  put  into  them. 

Passing  suddenly  from  these  lighter  structures,  let  us  ob- 
serve the  great  power  which  Swinburne  manifests  in  an- 
other kind  of  revival,  the  sixteen  syllable  line.  This  is 
not  a  modern  measure  at  all.  It  was  used  long  ago,  but 
was  practically  abandoned  and  almost  forgotten  except  by 
scholars  when  Swinburne  revived  it.  Nor  has  he  revived 
it  only  in  one  shape,  but  in  a  great  many  shapes,  sometimes 
using  single  lines,  sometimes  double,  or  again  varying  the 
accent  so  as  to  make  four  or  live  different  kinds  of  verse 
with  the  same  number  of  syllables.  The  poem  on  the 
Armada  is  a  rich  example  of  this  re-animation  and  varia- 
tion of  the  long  dead  form.  In  this  poem  Swinburne  de- 
scribes the  god  of  Spain  as  opposed  to  the  god  of  England, 
and  the  most  forceful  lines  are  those  devoted  to  these  con- 
ceptions.    Observe  the  double  rhymes. 

Ay,  but  we  that  the  wind  and  sea  gird  round  with  shelter  of  storms 

and  waves. 
Know  not  him  that  ye  worship,  grim  as  dreams  that  quicken  from 

dead  men's  graves: 
God  is  one  with  the  sea,  the  sun,  the  land  that  nursed  us,  the  love 

that  saves. 

Love  whose  heart  is  in  ours,  and  part  of  all  things  noble  and  all 
things  fair; 

Sweet  and  free  as  the  circling  sea,  sublime  and  kind  as  the  foster- 
ing air; 


STUDIES  IN  SWINBURNE  171 

Pure  of  shame  as  is  England's  name,  whose  crowns  to  come  are  as 
crowns  that  were. 

Now  we  have,  quite  easily,  a  change  in  the  measure.  We 
have  sixteen  syllables  still,  but  the  whole  music  is  changed. 

But  the  Lord  of  darkness,  the  God  whose  love  is  a  flaming  fire, 
The  master  whose  mercy  fulfils  wide  hell  till  its  tortures  tire, 
He  shall  surely  have  heed  of  his  servants  who  serve  him  for  love, 
not  hire. 

The  double  rhymes  are  not  used  here.  Later  on,  after  the 
English  victory  and  the  storm,  they  are  used  again,  for  the 
purpose  of  additional  force.  The  address  is  to  the  Span- 
iards and  to  their  gods. 

Lords  of  night,  who  would  breathe  your  blight  on  April's  morning 
and  August's  noon, 

God  your  Lord,  the  condemned,  the  abhorred,  sinks  hellward,  smit- 
ten with  deathlike  swoon. 

Death's  own  dart  in  his  hateful  heart  now  thrills,  and  night  shall 
receive  him  soon. 

God  the  Devil,  thy  reign  of  revel  is  here  forever  eclipsed  and  fled; 
God  the  Liar,  everlasting  fire  lays  hold  at  last  on  thee,  hand  and 
head. 

Page  after  page  of  constantly  varying  measures  of  this  kind 
will  be  found  in  the  poem — a  poem  which  notwithstanding 
its  strong  violence  at  times,  represents  the  power  of  the 
verse-maker  better  than  almost  any  other  single  piece  in  the 
work  of  his  later  years. 

From  what  extracts  we  have  already  made,  I  think  you 
will  see  enough  of  the  value  and  beauty  of  Swinburne's  dic- 
tion to  take  in  it  such  interest  as  it  really  deserves.  We 
might  continue  the  study  of  this  author  for  a  much  longer 
time.  But  the  year  is  waning,  the  third  term,  which  is  very 
short,  will  soon  be  upon  us;  and  I  wish  to  turn  with  you 
next  week  to  the  study  of  Browning. 


CHAPTER  V 
STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Robert  Browning  very  much  reminds  us  in  some  respects 
of  the  American  thinker,  Emerson.  The  main  doctrine  of 
Emerson  is  Individualism;  and  this  happens  also  to  be  the 
main  doctrine  of  Browning.  By  Individualism,  Emerson 
and  Browning  mean  self-cultivation.  Both  thought  that 
the  highest  possible  duty  of  every  man  was  to  develop  the 
best  powers  of  his  mind  and  body  to  the  utmost  possible  de- 
gree. Make  yourself  strong — that  is  the  teaching.  You 
are  only  a  man,  not  a  god;  therefore  it  is  very  likely  that  you 
will  do  many  things  which  are  very  wrong  or  very  foolish. 
But  whatever  you  do,  even  if  it  be  wrong,  do  it  well — do 
it  with  all  your  strength.  Even  a  strong  sin  may  be  better 
than  a  cowardly  virtue.  Weakness  is  of  all  things  the 
worst.  When  we  do  wrong,  experience  soon  teaches  us  our 
mistake.  And  the  stronger  the  mistake  has  been,  the  more 
quickly  will  the  experience  come  which  corrects  and  puri- 
fies. Now  you  understand  what  I  mean  by  Individualism 
— the  cultivation  by  untiring  exercise  of  all  our  best  facul- 
ties, and  especially  of  the  force  and  courage  to  act. 

This  Individualism  in  Emerson  was  founded  upon  a 
vague  Unitarian  pantheism.  The  same  fact  is  true  of 
Browning's  system.  According  to  both  thinkers,  all  of  us 
are  parts  of  one  infinite  life,  and  it  is  by  cultivating  our 
powers  that  we  can  best  serve  the  purpose  of  the  Infinite 
Mind.  Leaving  out  the  words  "mind"  and  "purpose," 
which  are  anthropomorphisms,  this  doctrine  accords  fairly 
well  with  evolutional  philosophy;  and  both  writers  were,  to 
a  certain  degree,  evolutionists.  But  neither  yielded  much 
to  the  melancholy  of  nineteenth  century  doubt.  Both 
were  optimists.     We  may  say  that  Browning's  philosophy 

is  an  optimistic  pantheism,  inculcating  effort  as  the  very 

172 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  173 

first  and  highest  duty  of  life.  But  Browning  is  not  espe- 
cially a  philosophical  poet.  We  find  his  philosophy  flash- 
ing out  only  at  long  intervals.  Knowing  this,  we  know 
what  he  is  likely  to  think  under  certain  circumstances;  but 
his  mission  was  of  another  special  kind. 

His  message  to  the  world  was  that  of  an  interpreter  of 
life.  His  art  is,  from  first  to  last,  a  faithful  reflection  of 
human  nature,  the  human  nature  of  hundreds  of  different 
characters,  good  and  bad,  but  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases, 
decidedly  bad.  Why"?  Because,  as  a  great  artist,  Brown- 
ing understood  very  well  that  you  can  draw  quite  as  good 
a  moral  from  bad  actions  as  from  good  ones,  and  his  un- 
conscious purpose  is  always  moral.  Such  art  of  picturing 
character,  to  be  really  great,  must  be  dramatic;  and  all  of 
Browning's  work  is  dramatic.  He  does  not  say  to  us,  "This 
man  has  such  and  such  a  character" ;  he  makes  the  man 
himself  act  and  speak  so  as  to  show  his  nature.  The  sec- 
ond fact,  therefore,  to  remember  about  Browning  is  that 
artistically  he  is  a  dramatic  poet,  whose  subject  is  human 
nature.  No  other  English  poet  so  closely  resembled 
Shakespeare  in  this  kind  of  representation  as  Browning. 

There  is  one  more  remarkable  fact  about  the  poet.  He 
always,  or  nearly  always,  writes  in  the  first  person.  Every 
one  of  his  poems,  with  few  exceptions,  is  a  soliloquy.  It 
is  not  he  who  speaks,  of  course;  it  is  the  "I"  of  some  other 
person's  soul.  This  kind  of  literary  form  is  called  "mono- 
logue." Even  the  enormous  poem  of  "The  Ring  and  the 
Book"  is  nothing  but  a  gigantic  collection  of  monologues, 
grouped  and  ordered  so  as  to  produce  one  great  dramatic 
effect. 

In  the  case  of  Browning,  I  shall  not  attempt  much  illus- 
tration by  way  of  texts,  because  a  great  deal  of  Browning's 
form  could  be  not  only  of  no  use  to  you,  but  would  even 
be  mischievous  in  its  influence  upon  your  use  of  language. 
In  Browning  every  rule  of  rhetoric,  of  arrangement,  is  likely 
to  be  broken.     The  adjective  is  separated  by  vast  distances 


174  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

from  the  noun;  the  preposition  is  tumbled  after  the  word 
to  which  it  refers ;  the  verb  is  found  at  the  end  of  a  sentence 
of  which  it  should  have  been  the  first  word.  When  Car- 
lyle  first  read  the  poem  called  "Sordello,"  he  said  that  he 
could  not  tell  whether  "Sordello"  was  a  man  or  a  town  or 
a  book.  And  the  obscurity  of  "Sordello"  is  in  some  places 
so  atrocious  that  I  do  not  think  anybody  in  the  world  can 
unravel  it.  Now,  most  of  Browning's  long  poems  are  writ- 
ten in  this  amazing  style.  The  text  is,  therefore,  not  a 
good  subject  for  literary  study.  But  it  is  an  admirable  sub- 
ject for  psychological  study,  emotional  study,  dramatic 
study,  and  sometimes  for  philosophic  study.  Instead  of 
giving  extracts,  therefore,  from  very  long  poems,  I  shall 
give  only  a  summary  of  the  meaning  of  the  poem  itself.  If 
such  summary  should  tempt  you  to  the  terrible  labour  of 
studying  the  original,  I  am  sure  that  you  would  be  very 
tired,  but  after  the  weariness,  you  would  be  very  much  sur- 
prised and  pleased. 

Providing,  of  course,  that  you  would  understand;  and  I 
very  much  doubt  whether  you  could  understand.  I  doubt 
because  I  cannot  always  understand  it  myself,  no  matter 
how  hard  I  try. 

One  reason  is  the  suppression  of  words.  Browning 
leaves  out  all  the  articles,  prepositions,  and  verbs  that  he 
can.  I  met  some  years  ago  a  Japanese  scholar  who  had 
mastered  almost  every  difficulty  of  the  English  language 
except  the  articles  and  prepositions;  he  had  never  been 
abroad  long  enough  to  acquire  the  habit  of  using  them 
properly.  But  it  was  his  business  to  write  many  letters 
upon  technical  subjects,  and  these  letters  were  always  per- 
fectly correct,  except  for  the  extraordinary  fact  that  they 
contained  no  articles  and  very  few  prepositions.  Much  of 
Browning's  poetry  reads  just  in  that  way.  You  cannot  say 
that  there  is  anything  wrong;  but  too  much  is  left  to  the 
imagination.  Therefore  he  has  been  spoken  of  as  writing 
in  telegraph  language. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  175 

Not  to  make  Browning  too  formidable  at  first,  let  us  be- 
gin with  a  few  of  his  lighter  studies,  in  very  simple  verse. 
I  will  take  as  the  first  example  the  poem  called  "A  Light 
Woman."  This  is  a  polite  word  for  courtesan,  "light"  re- 
ferring to  the  moral  character.  The  story,  told  in  mono- 
logue, is  the  most  ordinary  story  imaginable.  It  happens 
in  every  great  city  of  the  world  almost  every  day,  among 
that  class  of  young  men  who  play  with  lire.  But  there  are 
two  classes  among  these,  the  strong  and  the  weak.  The 
strong  take  life  as  half  a  joke,  a  very  pleasant  thing,  and 
pass  through  many  dangers  unscathed  simply  because  they 
know  that  what  they  are  doing  is  foolish;  they  never  con- 
sider it  in  a  serious  way.  The  other  class  of  young  men 
take  life  seriously.  They  are  foolish  rather  through  affec- 
tion and  pity  than  through  anything  else.  They  want  a 
woman's  love,  and  they  foolishly  ask  it  from  women  who 
cannot  love  at  all — not,  at  least,  in  ninety  cases  out  of  a 
hundred.  They  get  what  seems  to  them  affection,  however, 
and  this  deludes  them.  Then  they  become  bewitched;  and 
the  result  is  much  sorrow,  perhaps  ruin,  perhaps  crime,  per- 
haps suicide.  In  Browning's  poem  we  have  a  representa- 
tive of  each  type.  A  strong  man,  strong  in  character,  has 
a  young  friend  who  has  been  fascinated  by  a  woman  of  a 
dangerous  class.  He  says  to  himself,  "My  friend  will  be 
ruined;  he  is  bewitched;  it  is  no  use  to  talk  to  him.  I  will 
save  him  by  taking  that  woman  away  from  him.  I  know 
the  kind  of  man  that  she  would  like;  she  would  like  such  a 
man  as  I."  And  the  rest  of  the  cruel  story  is  told  in 
Browning's  verses  too  well  to  need  further  explanation. 

So  far  as  our  story  approaches  the  end, 
Which  do  you  pity  the  most  of  us  three? — 

My  friend,  or  the  mistress  of  my  friend 
With  her  wanton  eyes,  or  me? 

My  friend  was  already  too  good  to  lose, 
And  seemed  in  the  way  of  improvement  yet, 


176  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

When  she  crossed  his  path  with  her  hunting-noose, 
And  over  him  drew  her  net. 

When  I  saw  him  tangled  in  her  toils, 
A  shame,  said  I,  if  she  adds  just  him 

To  her  nine-and-ninety  other  spoils, 
The  hundredth  for  a  whim! 

And  before  my  friend  be  wholly  hers, 
How  easy  to  prove  to  him,  I  said, 

An  eagle's  the  game  her  pride  prefers. 
Though  she  snaps  at  a  wren  instead ! 

So  I  gave  her  eyes  my  own  eyes  to  take, 
My  hand  sought  hers  as  in  earnest  need. 

And  round  she  turned  for  my  noble  sake, 
And  gave  me  herself  indeed. 

The  eagle  am  I,  with  my  fame  in  the  world, 
The  wren  is  he,  with  his  maiden  face. 

You  look  away,  and  your  lip  is  curled? 
Patience,  a  moment's  space ! 

For  see,  my  friend  goes  shaking  and  white ; 

He  eyes  me  as  the  basilisk : 
I  have  turned,  it  appears,  his  day  to  night, 

Eclipsing  his  sun's  disk. 

And  I  did  it,  he  thinks,  as  a  very  thief : 

"Though  I  love  her — that,  he  comprehends — 

One  should  master  one's  passions  (love,  in  chief). 
And  be  loyal  to  one's  friends !" 

And  she — she  lies  in  my  hand  as  tame 
As  a  pear  late  basking  over  a  wall ; 

Just  a  touch  to  try,  and  off  it  came; 
'Tis  mine, — can  I  let  it  fall? 

With  no  mind  to  eat  it,  that's  the  worst! 

Were  it  thrown  in  the  road,  would  the  case  assist? 
'Twas  quenching  a  dozen  blue-flies'  thirst 

When  I  gave  its  stalk  a  twist. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  177 

And  I, — what  I  seem  to  my  friend,  you  see: 
What  I  soon  shall  seem  to  his  love,  you  guess: 

What  I  seem  to  myself,  do  you  ask  of  me? 
No  hero,  I  confess. 

'Tis  an  awkward  thing  to  play  with  souls, 

And  matter  enough  to  save  one's  own : 
Yet  think  of  my  friend,  and  the  burning  coals 

He  played  with  for  bits  of  stone ! 

One  likes  to  show  the  truth  for  the  truth ; 

That  the  woman  was  light  is  very  true : 
But  suppose  she  says, — Never  mind  that  youth ! 

What  wrong  have  I  done  to  you'? 

Well,  anyhow,  here  the  story  stays, 

So  far  at  least  as  I  understand; 
And,  Robert  Browning,  you  writer  of  plays, 

Here's  a  subject  made  to  your  hand  I 

Now  let  us  see  how  much  there  is  to  study  in  this  simple- 
seeming  poem.  It  will  give  us  an  easy  and  an  excellent 
example  of  the  way  in  which  Browning  must  be  read;  and 
it  will  require  at  least  an  hour's  chat  to  explain  properly. 
For,  really,  Browning  never  writes  simply. 

Here  we  have  a  monologue.  It  is  uttered  to  the  poet  by 
a  young  man  with  whom  he  has  been  passing  an  hour  in 
conversation.  We  can  guess  from  the  story  something 
about  the  young  man;  we  can  almost  see  him.  We  know 
that  he  must  be  handsome,  tall,  graceful,  and  strong;  and 
full  of  that  formidable  coolness  which  the  sense  of  great 
strength  gives — great  strength  of  mind  and  will  rather  than 
of  body,  but  probably  both.  Let  us  hear  him  talk.  "You 
see  that  friend  of  mine  over  there'?"  he  says  to  the  poet. 
"He  hates  me  now.  When  he  looks  at  me  his  lips  turn 
white.  I  can't  say  that  he  is  wrong  to  hate  me,  but  really 
I  wanted  to  do  him  a  service.  He  got  fascinated  by  that 
woman  of  whom  I  was  speaking;  she  was  playing  with  him 
as  a  cat  plays  with  a  mouse  or  with  a  bird  before  killing  it. 


178  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Well,  I  thought  to  myself  that  my  friend  was  in  great  dan- 
ger, and  that  it  was  better  for  me  to  try  to  save  him.  You 
see,  he  is  not  the  kind  of  man  that  a  woman  of  that  class 
could  fancy;  he  is  too  small,  too  feeble,  too  gentle;  they 
like  strong  men  only,  men  they  are  afraid  of.  So,  just  for 
my  friend's  sake,  I  made  love  to  her  one  day,  and  she  left 
him  immediately  and  came  to  me.  I  have  to  take  care  of 
her  now,  and  I  do  not  like  the  trouble  at  all.  I  never  cared 
about  the  woman  herself;  she  is  not  the  kind  of  woman  that 
I  admire;  I  did  all  this  only  to  save  my  friend.  And  my 
friend  does  not  understand.  He  thinks  that  I  took  the 
woman  from  him  because  I  was  in  love  with  her;  he  thinks 
it  quite  natural  that  I  should  love  her  (which  I  don't) ;  but 
he  says  that  even  in  love  a  man  ought  to  be  true  to  his 
friends." 

At  this  point  of  the  story  the  young  man  sees  that  the 
poet  is  disgusted  by  what  he  has  heard,  but  this  does  not 
embarrass  him;  he  is  too  strong  a  character  to  be  embar- 
rassed at  all,  and  he  resumes:  "Don't  be  impatient — I 
want  to  tell  you  the  whole  thing.  You  see,  I  have  de- 
stroyed all  the  happiness  of  my  friend  merely  through  my 
desire  to  do  him  a  service.  He  hates  me,  and  he  does  not 
understand.  He  thinks  that  I  was  moved  by  lust;  and 
everybody  else  thinks  the  same  thing.  Of  course  it  is  not 
true.  But  now  there  is  another  trouble.  The  woman  does 
not  understand.  She  thinks  that  I  was  really  in  love  with 
her;  and  I  must  get  rid  of  her  as  soon  as  I  can.  If  I  tell  her 
that  I  made  love  to  her  only  in  order  to  save  my  friend, 
she  will  say,  'What  had  that  to  do  with  your  treatment  of 
me?  I  did  not  do  you  any  harm;  why  should  you  have 
amused  yourself  by  trying  to  injure  and  to  deceive  me'?' 
If  she  says  that,  I  don't  know  how  I  shall  be  able  to  answer. 
:So  it  seems  that  I  have  made  a  serious  mistake;  I  have  lost 
my  friend,  I  have  wantonly  wronged  a  woman  whose  only 
fault  toward  me  was  to  love  me,  and  I  have  made  for  my- 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  179 

self  a  bad  reputation  in  society.  People  cannot  understand 
the  truth  of  the  thing." 

This  is  the  language  of  the  man,  and  he  perhaps  thinks 
that  he  is  telling  the  truth.  But  is  he  telling  the  truth? 
Does  any  man  in  this  world  ever  tell  the  exact  truth  about 
himself?  Probably  not.  No  man  really  understands  him- 
self so  well  as  to  be  able  to  tell  the  exact  truth  about  him- 
self. It  is  possible  that  this  man  believes  himself  to  be 
speaking  truthfully,  but  he  is  certainly  telling  a  lie,  a  half- 
truth  only.  We  have  his  exact  words,  but  the  exact  lan- 
guage of  the  speaker  in  any  one  of  Browning's  monologues 
does  not  tell  the  truth ;  it  only  suggests  the  truth.  We  must 
find  out  the  real  character  of  the  person,  and  the  real  facts 
of  the  case,  from  our  own  experience  of  human  nature. 
And  to  understand  the  real  meaning  behind  this  man's 
words,  you  must  ask  yourselves  whether  you  would  believe 
such  a  story  if  it  were  told  to  you  in  exactly  the  same  way 
by  some  one  whom  you  know.  I  shall  answer  for  you  that 
you  certainly  would  not. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  real  meaning.  The  young  man 
saw  his  friend  desperately  in  love  with  a  woman  who  did 
not  love  that  friend.  The  woman  was  beautiful.  Looking 
at  her,  he  thought  to  himself,  "How  easily  I  could  take  her 
away  from  my  friend  I"  Then  he  thought  to  himself  that 
not  only  would  this  be  a  cause  of  enmity  between  himself 
and  his  friend,  but  such  an  action  would  be  severely  judged 
by  all  his  acquaintances.  Could  he  be  justified?  When  a 
man  wishes  to  do  what  is  wrong,  he  can  nearly  always  in- 
vent a  moral  reason  for  doing  it.  So  this  young  man  finds 
a  moral  reason.  He  says,  "My  friend  is  in  danger;  there- 
fore I  will  sacrifice  myself  for  him.  It  will  be  quite  grati- 
fying both  to  my  pride  and  to  my  pleasure  to  take  that 
woman  from  him;  then  I  shall  tell  everybody  why  I  did  it. 
My  friend  would  like  to  kill  me,  of  course,  but  he  is  too 
weak  to  avenge  himself."     He   follows  this  course,   and 


180  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

really  tries  to  persuade  himself  that  he  is  justified  in  follow- 
ing it.  When  he  says  that  he  did  not  care  for  the  woman, 
he  only  means  that  he  is  now  tired  of  her.  He  has  indulged 
his  lust  and  his  vanity  by  the  most  treacherous  and  brutal 
conduct;  yet  he  tries  to  tell  the  world  that  he  is  a  moral  man, 
a  martyr,  a  calumniated  person.  Such  is  the  real  meaning 
of  his  apology. 

Nevertheless  we  cannot  altogether  dislike  this  young 
man.  He  is  selfish  and  proud  and  not  quite  truthful,  but 
these  are  faults  of  youth.  On  the  other  hand  we  can  feel 
that  he  is  very  gifted,  very  intelligent,  and  very  brave,  and, 
what  is  still  better,  that  he  is  ashamed  of  himself.  He  has 
done  wrong,  and  the  very  fact  that  he  lies  about  what  he 
has  done  shows  us  that  he  is  ashamed.  He  is  not  all  bad. 
If  he  does  not  tell  us  the  whole  truth,  he  tells  a  great  deal 
of  it;  and  we  feel  that  as  he  becomes  older  he  will  become 
better.  He  has  abused  his  power,  and  he  feels  sorry  for 
having  abused  it;  some  day  he  will  probably  become  a  very 
fine  man.  We  feel  this;  and,  curiously,  we  like  him  better 
than  we  like  the  man  whom  he  has  wronged.  We  like  him 
because  of  his  force;  we  despise  the  other  man  because  of 
his  weakness.  It  would  be  a  mistake  to  do  this  if  we  did 
not  feel  that  the  man  who  has  done  wrong  is  really  the 
better  man  of  the  two.  What  he  has  done  is  not  at  all  to 
be  excused,  but  we  believe  that  he  will  redeem  his  fault 
later  on.  This  type  is  an  English  or  American  type — per- 
haps it  might  be  a  German  type.  There  is  nothing  Latin 
about  it.     Its  faults  are  of  the  Northern  race. 

But  now  let  us  take  an  unredeemable  type,  the  purely 
bad,  the  hopelessly  wicked,  a  type  not  of  the  North  this 
time,  but  purely  Latin.  As  the  Latin  races  have  been  civil- 
ised for  a  very  much  longer  time  than  the  Northern  races, 
they  have  higher  capacities  in  certain  directions.  They  are 
physically  and  emotionally  much  more  attractive  to  us. 
The  beauty  of  an  Italian  or  French  or  Spanish  woman  is 
incomparably  more  delicate,  more  exquisite,  than  the  beauty 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  181 

of  the  Northern  women.  The  social  intelligence  of  the  Ital- 
ian or  Spaniard  or  Frenchman  is  something  immeasurably 
superior  to  the  same  capacity  in  the  Englishman,  the  Scan- 
dinavian, or  the  German.  The  Latins  have  much  less  moral 
stamina,  but  imaginatively,  eesthetically,  emotionally,  they 
have  centuries  of  superiority.  The  Northern  races  were 
savages  when  these  were  lords  of  the  world.  But  the  vices 
of  civilisation  are  likely  to  be  developed  in  them  to  a  degree 
impossible  to  the  Northern  character.  If  their  good  quali- 
ties are  older  and  finer  than  ours,  so  their  bad  qualities  will 
be  older  and  stronger  and  deeper.  At  no  time  was  the  worst 
side  of  man  more  terribly  shown  than  during  the  Renais- 
sance, Here  is  an  illustration.  We  know  that  for  this 
man  there  is  no  hope;  the  evil  predominates  in  his  nature 
to  such  an  extent  that  we  can  see  nothing  at  all  of  the  good 
except  his  fine  sense  of  beauty.  And  even  this  sense  be- 
comes a  curse  to  him. 

MY  LAST  DUCHESS 

That's  my  last  Duchess  painted  on  the  wall, 
Looking  as  if  she  were  alive.     I  call 
That  piece  a  wonder,  now :  Fra  Pandolf 's  hands 
Worked  busily  a  day,  and  there  she  stands. 
Will't  please  you  sit  and  look  at  her?  I  said 
"Fra  Pandolf"  by  design,  for  never  read 
Strangers  like  you  that  pictured  countenance, 
The  depth  and  passion  of  its  earnest  glance. 
But  to  myself  they  turned  (since  none  puts  by 
The  curtain  I  have  drawn  for  you,  but  I) 
And  seemed  as  they  would  ask  me,  if  they  durst. 
How  such  a  glance  came  there;  so,  not  the  first 
Are  you  to  turn  and  ask  thus. 

Let  us  paraphrase  the  above.  It  is  a  duke  of  Ferrara  who 
speaks.  The  person  to  whom  he  is  speaking  is  a  marriage- 
maker,  a  nakodo  employed  by  the  prince  of  a  neighbouring 
state.  For  the  duke  wishes  to  marry  the  daughter  of  that 
prince.     When  the  match-maker  comes,  the  duke  draws  a 


182  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

curtain  from  a  part  of  the  wall  of  the  room  in  which  the 
two  men  meet,  and  shows  him,  painted  upon  the  wall,  the 
picture  of  a  wonderfully  beautiful  woman.  Then  the  duke 
says  to  the  messenger:  "That  is  a  picture  of  my  last  wife. 
It  is  a  beautiful  picture,  is  it  not*?  Well,  it  was  painted  by 
that  wonderful  monk,  Fra  Pandolf.  I  mention  his  name 
on  purpose,  because  everybody  who  sees  that  picture  for  the 
first  time  wants  to  know  why  it  is  so  beautiful,  and  would 
ask  me  questions  if  they  were  not  afraid.  I  have  shown  it 
to  several  other  people;  but  nobody,  except  myself,  dares 
draw  the  curtain  that  covers  it.  Yes,  Fra  Pandolf  painted 
it  all  in  one  day;  and  the  expression  of  the  smiling  face  still 
makes  everybody  wonder.  You  wonder ;  you  want  to  know 
why  that  woman  looks  so  charming,  so  bewitching  in  the 
picture." 

Now  listen  to  the  explanation.     It  is  worthy  of  the  great- 
est of  the  villains  of  Shakespeare : 

Sir,  'twas  not 
Her  husband's  presence  only,  called  that  spot 
Of  joy  into  the  Duchess'  cheek:  perhaps 
Fra  Pandolf  chanced  to  say,  "Her  mantle  laps 
Over  my  lady's  wrist  too  much,"  or,  "Paint 
Must  never  hope  to  reproduce  the  faint 
Half-flush  that  dies  along  her  throat":  such  stuff 
Was  courtesy,  she  thought,  and  cause  enough 
For  calling  up  that  spot  of  joy.     She  had 
A  heart — how  shall  I  say? — too  soon  made  glad, 
Too  easily  impressed :  she  liked  whate'er 
She  looked  on,  and  her  looks  went  everywhere. 
Sir,  'twas  all  one !     My  favour  at  her  breast, 
The  dropping  of  the  daylight  in  the  West, 
The  bough  of  cherries  some  officious  fool 
Broke  in  the  orchard  for  her,  the  white  mule 
She  rode  with  round  the  terrace — all  and  each 
Would  draw  from  her  alike  the  approving  speech, 
Or  blush,  at  least.     She  thanked  men — good !  but  thanked 
Somehow — I  know  not  how — as  if  she  ranked 
My  gift  of  a  nine-hundred-years-old  name 
With  anybody's  gift. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  183 

The  explanation  at  least  shows  us  the  sweet  and  childish 
character  of  the  woman,  which  the  speaker  tries  to  describe 
as  folly:  "It  was  not  her  gladness  at  seeing  me,  her  hus- 
band, that  made  her  smile  so  beautifully,  that  brought  the 
rosy  dimple  to  her  cheek.  Probably  the  painter  said  some- 
thing to  flatter  her,  and  she  smiled  at  him.  She  was  ready  to 
smile  at  anything,  at  anybody,  she  was  altogether  too  easily 
pleased;  she  liked  everything  and  everybody  that  she  saw, 
and  she  took  a  pleasure  in  looking  at  everything  and  at 
everybody.  Nothing  made  any  difference  to  her.  She 
would  smile  at  the  jewel  which  I  gave  her,  but  she  would 
also  smile  at  the  sunset,  at  a  bunch  of  cherries,  at  her  mule, 
at  anything  or  anybody.  Any  matter  would  bring  the  dim- 
ple to  her  cheek,  or  the  blush  of  joy.  I  do  not  blame  her 
for  thanking  people,  but  she  had  a  way  of  thanking  people 
that  seemed  to  show  that  she  was  just  as  much  pleased  by 
what  a  stranger  did  for  her,  as  by  the  fact  that  she  had  be- 
come the  wife  of  a  man  like  myself,  head  of  a  family  nine 
hundred  years  old,"  Notice  how  the  speaker  calls  the  man 
who  gave  his  wife  a  bough  with  cherries  upon  it  "an  offi- 
cious fool."  We  can  begin  to  perceive  what  was  the  mat- 
ter. He  was  insanely  jealous  of  her,  without  any  cause; 
and  she,  poor  little  soul !  did  not  know  anything  about  it. 
She  was  too  innocent  to  know.  The  duke  does  not  want 
anybody  else  to  know,  either;  he  is  trying  to  give  quite  a 
different  explanation  of  what  happened : 

Who'd  stoop  to  blame 
This  sort  of  trifling?     Even  had  you  skill 
In  speech — (which  I  have  not) — to  make  your  will 
Quite  clear  to  such  an  one,  and  say,  "Just  this 
Or  that  in  you  disgusts  me ;  here  you  miss, 
Or  there  exceed  the  mark" — and  if  she  let 
Herself  be  lessoned  so,  nor  plainly  set 
Her  wits  to  yours,  forsooth,  and  made  excuse, 
— E'en  then  would  be  some  stooping ;  and  I  choose 
Never  to  stoop.     Oh  sir,  she  smiled,  no  doubt, 


184  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Whene'er  I  passed  her ;  but  who  passed  without 
Much  the  same  smile? 

This  means,  "A  man  like  me  cannot  afford  to  degrade  him- 
self by  showing  what  he  feels  under  such  circumstances;  a 
man  like  me  cannot  say  to  a  woman,  'I  am  greatly  vexed 
and  pained  when  I  see  you  smile  at  any  one  except  myself.' 
If  I  were  to  speak  to  her  about  the  matter  at  all,  she  might 
think  I  was  jealous.  Of  course  she  would  insult  me  by 
making  excuses,  by  saying  that  she  did  not  know,  which 
would  be  nothing  less  than  daring  to  oppose  her  judgment 
to  mine.  To  speak  about  my  feelings  in  any  case  would 
require  a  skill  in  the  use  of  language  such  as  only  poets  or 
such  vulgar  people  possess.  I  am  a  prince,  not  a  poet,  and 
I  shall  never  disgrace  myself  by  telling  anybody,  especially 
a  woman,  that  I  do  not  like  this  or  I  do  not  like  that.  So 
I  said  nothing.  Perhaps  you  think  that  she  did  not  smile- 
when  she  saw  me.  That  would  be  a  mistake;  she  always 
smiled  when  I  passed.  But  she  smiled  at  everybody  else 
in  exactly  the  same  way."  He  found  the  smile  unbearable 
at  last,  and  the  poet  lets  him  tell  us  the  rest  in  a  very  few 
words : 

This  grew ;  I  gave  commands ; 
Then  all  smiles  stopped  together. 

In  other  words,  he  caused  her  to  be  killed;  told  somebody 
to  cut  her  throat,  probably,  or  to  give  her  a  drink  of  poison, 
all  without  having  ever  allowed  her  to  know  how  or  why 
he  had  been  displeased  with  her.  And  he  is  not  a  bit  sorry. 
No,  looking  at  the  dead  woman's  picture,  in  company  with 
the  marriage-maker,  he  coolly  expresses  his  admiration  for 
it  as  a  work  of  realistic  art — as  much  as  to  say,  "You  can 
see  for  yourself  how  beautiful  she  was;  but  that  did  not 
prevent   me    from   killing   her."     Listen   to   his   atrocious 

chatter: 

There  she  stands 
As  if  alive.     Will't  please  you  rise  ?     We'll  meet 
The  company  below,  then.     I  repeat, 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  185 

The  Count  your  master's  known  munificence 
Is  ample  warrant  that  no  just  pretence 
Of  mine  for  dowry  will  be  disallowed ; 
Though  his  fair  daughter's  self,  as  I  avowed 
At  starting,  is  my  object.     Nay,  we'll  go 
Together  down,  sir.  .  .  .  Notice  Neptune,  though, 
Taming  a  sea-horse,  thought  a  rarity. 
Which  Claus  of  Innsbruck  cast  in  bronze  for  me ! 

Evidently  both  had  seated  themselves  in  front  of  the  pic- 
ture. The  count  says,  "Now  she  is  as  if  alive;  and  we  shall 
go  downstairs  together.  As  for  the  matter  of  the  new  mar- 
riage, you  can  tell  your  master  that  I  am  quite  sure  so 
generous  a  man  will  not  make  any  objection  to  my  just 
demands  for  a  dowry — though,  of  couise,  it  is  his  daughter 
that  I  principally  want."  Here  the  messenger  bows,  to 
allow  the  duke  to  go  first  downstairs.  He  answers:  "No, 
we  can  go  down  together  this  time."  On  the  way,  prob- 
ably at  a  turn  of  the  grand  staircase,  the  count  points  to  a 
fine  bronze  statue,  representing  the  god  of  the  sea,  and  asks 
the  man  to  admire  it.     That  is  all. 

This  is  a  Renaissance  character,  and  a  very  terrible  one. 
But  it  is  also  very  complicated.  We  must  think  a  little  be- 
fore we  can  even  guess  the  whole  range  and  depth  of  this 
man's  wickedness.  Even  then  we  can  only  guess,  because 
he  lets  us  know  only  so  much  about  him  as  he  wishes  us  to 
know.  Every  word  that  he  says  is  carefully  measured  in 
its  pride,  in  its  falsehood,  in  its  cruelty,  in  its  cunning. 
Just  this  much  he  tells  us:  "I  had  a  beautiful  wife,  but 
you  must  not  think  tliat  I  can  be  influenced  by  beauty. 
Look  at  the  picture  of  her.  You  would  worship  a  woman 
like  that.  But  I  cut  her  throat.  Why  did  I  do  it*?  Just 
because  I  did  not  like  her  way  of  smiling;  she  was  too 
tender-hearted  to  love.  And  I  would  do  the  same  thing  to- 
morrow to  any  one  who  displeased  me.  Some  people  will 
think  that  I  am  jealous;  let  them  think  so.  But  you  had 
better  tell  the  girl  who  now  expects  to  become  my  wife  what 
kind  of  person  I  am." 


186  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

How  much  of  this  is  the  truth"?  Probably  more  than 
half.  Undoubtedly  the  man  was  jealous,  and  he  wishes  to 
deceive  us  in  regard  to  the  whole  extent  of  that  jealousy. 
He  has  no  shame  or  remorse  for  crime,  but  he  has  shame  of 
appearing  to  be  weak.  Jealousy  is  a  weakness;  therefore 
he  does  not  like  to  be  suspected  of  being  weak  in  that  way. 
He  gives  a  strong  suggestion  that  he  must  not  have  future 
cause  for  jealousy — nothing  more.  But  the  fact  that  he 
most  wishes  to  have  understood  is  that  his  wife  must  be  a 
wicked  woman,  a  vulture  among  vultures.  He  does  not 
want  a  dove.  And  he  hated  his  first  wife  much  more  be- 
cause she  was  good  and  gentle  and  loving,  than  because  she 
smiled  at  other  people.  You  may  ask,  why  should  he  hate 
a  woman  for  being  good?  The  answer  is  simple.  In  the 
courts  of  such  princes  as  the  Borgias,  a  good  woman  could 
only  do  mischief.  She  could  not  be  used  for  cunning  and 
wicked  purposes.  She  would  have  refused  to  poison  a 
guest,  or  to  entice  a  man  to  make  love  to  her  only  in  order 
to  get  that  man  killed;  and  as  you  will  discover  if  you  read 
the  terrible  history  of  the  Italian  republics,  all  these  things 
had  to  be  done.  Morality  was  a  hindrance  to  such  men. 
Power  remained  only  to  cunning  and  strength;  all  kind- 
heartedness  was  regarded  as  criminal  weakness.  When  you 
have  become  familiar  with  the  real  history  of  Ferrara,  you 
will  perceive  the  terrible  truth  of  this  poem. 

The  most  unpleasant  fact  still  remains  to  be  noticed. 
The  wickedness  of  this  man  is  not  a  wickedness  of  igno- 
rance. It  is  a  wickedness  of  highly  cultivated  intelligence. 
The  man  is  an  artist,  a  judge  of  beauty,  a  connoisseur.  To 
suppose  that  cultivation  makes  a  naturally  wicked  man  bet- 
ter is  a  great  educational  mistake,  as  Herbert  Spencer 
showed  long  ago.  Education  does  not  make  a  man  more 
moral ;  it  may  give  him  power  to  be  more  immoral.  Italian 
history  furnishes  us  with  the  most  extraordinary  illustra- 
tions of  this  fact.  Some  of  the  wickedest  of  the  Italian 
princes  were  great  poets,  great  artists,  great  scholars,  and 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  187 

great  patrons  of  learning.  Among  the  monsters,  we  have, 
for  example,  the  terrible  Malatesta  of  Rimini,  whose  life 
was  given  to  us  some  years  ago  by  the  French  antiquarian 
Yriarte.  He  wrote  the  most  delicate  and  tender  poetry, 
and  he  committed  crimes  so  terrible  that  they  cannot  be 
named.  When  he  laid  his  hand,  however  lightly,  upon  a 
horse,  the  animal  began  to  tremble  from  head  to  foot.  Yet 
he  could  love,  and  be  the  most  devoted  of  gallants.  Again, 
you  know  the  case  of  Benvenuto  Cellini,  a  splendid  artist 
and  an  atrocious  murderer,  who  actually  tells  us  the  pleas- 
ure that  he  felt  in  killing.  And  there  were  the  Borgias,  all 
of  them,  father,  daughter,  and  brothers,  who  committed 
every  crime  and  never  knew  remorse,  yet  who  were  beautiful 
and  gifted  lovers  of  art  and  poetry.  So  in  this  case  Brown- 
ing is  true  to  life  when  he  shows  us  the  duke  pointing  out 
the  beauty  of  pictures  and  statues,  even  in  the  same  moment 
that  he  is  uttering  horrors.  There  is  a  strange  mixture  of 
the  extremes  of  the  bad  and  of  the  good  in  the  higher  types 
of  the  Italian  race — a  mingling  that  gives  us  much  to  think 
about  in  regard  to  moral  problems.  Probably  that  is  why 
a  very  large  number  of  Browning's  studies  are  of  the  dark 
side  of  Italian  character. 

Now  we  can  take  a  lighter  subject.  It  is  not  black,  it  is 
only  gloomy,  and  the  interest  of  it  will  chiefly  be  found 
in  the  extraordinary  moral  comment  made  by  Browning. 
This  is  one  of  the  few  studies  which  is  not  all  written  in 
the  first  person.  It  is  called  "The  Statue  and  the  Bust." 
It  is  a  tale  or  tradition  of  Florence. 

The  legend  is  that  a  certain  duke  of  Florence,  by  name 
Ferdinand,  attempted  to  captivate  the  young  bride  of  a 
Florentine  nobleman  named  Riccardi.  But  Riccardi,  a 
very  keen  man,  observed  what  was  going  on ;  and  he  said  to 
his  wife  very  quietly  and  firmly,  "This  is  your  room  in  my 
house;  you  shall  stay  in  this  room  and  never  leave  it  during 
the  rest  of  your  life,  never  leave  it  until  you  are  carried 
to  the  graveyard."     So  she  had  to  live  in  that  room.     But 


188  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

the  duke,  who  was  a  very  handsome  man,  got  a  splendid 
bronze  statue  of  himself  on  horseback  erected  in  the  public 
street  opposite  the  window  of  the  lady's  room,  so  that  she 
could  always  look  at  him.  Then  she  had  a  bust  of  herself 
made  and  placed  above  the  window,  so  that  the  duke  could 
see  the  bust  whenever  he  rode  by.  That  is  all  the  story — 
but  not  all  the  story  as  Browning  tells  it.  Browning  tells 
us  the  secret  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  imprisoned  wife 
and  of  the  duke.  At  first  the  two  intended  to  run  away  to- 
gether. It  would  have  been  an  easy  matter.  The  woman 
would  only  have  had  to  dress  herself  like  a  boy,  and  drop 
from  the  window,  and  get  help  from  the  duke  to  reach  his 
palace.  The  duke  thought  to  himself,  "I  can  get  this 
woman  whenever  I  wish;  but  it  will  be  better  to  wait  a  little 
while;  then  we  can  manage  to  live  as  we  please  without 
making  too  much  trouble."  So  they  both  waited  till  they 
became  old.     Then  the  woman  called  an  artist  and  said : 

"Make  me  a  face  on  the  window  there, 
Waiting  as  ever,  mute  the  while, 
My  love  to  pass  below  in  the  square  I 

"And  let  me  think  that  it  may  beguile 
Dreary  days  which  the  dead  must  spend 
Down  in  their  darkness  under  the  aisle, 

"To  say,  'What  matters  it  at  the  end? 
I  did  no  more  while  my  heart  was  warm 
Than  does  that  image,  my  pale-faced  friend.'  " 

She  thinks  to  console  herself  a  moment  by  saying,  "What 
is  life  worth?  When  I  was  young  and  beautiful  and  im- 
pulsive, I  did  no  more  harm  or  good,  no  more  right  or  wrong, 
than  the  bust  that  resembles  me.  It  is  a  comfort  to  think 
that  I  did  nothing  wrong."     But  is  that  enough? 

"Where  is  the  use  of  the  lip's  red  charm. 
The  heaven  of  hair,  the  pride  of  the  brow, 
And  the  blood  that  blues  the  inside  arm — 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  189 

"Unless  we  turn,  as  the  soul  knows  how, 
The  earthly  gift  to  an  end  divine? 
A  lady  of  clay  is  as  good,  I  trow." 

Somehow  or  other  she  feels  that  it  is  no  consolation  not  to 
have  done  wrong.  She  wonders  what  was  the  use  of  being 
so  beautiful,  if  she  could  not  make  use  of  that  beauty.  The 
bust  itself  lived  just  as  much  as  she  did.  And  all  this  is 
true ;  but  she  is  nearer  to  living  than  the  duke.  What  does 
he  say*? 

"Set  me  on  horseback  here  aloft, 
Alive,  as  the  crafty  sculptor  can, 

"In  the  very  square  I  have  crossed  so  oft : 
That  men  may  admire,  when  future  suns 
Shall  touch  the  eyes  to  a  purpose  soft, 

"While  the  mouth  and  the  brow  stay  brave  in  bronze — 
Admire  and  say,  'When  he  was  alive 
How  he  would  take  his  pleasure  once  I'  " 

Nothing  else;  he  only  wants  to  be  admired  after  his  death, 
to  have  people  say,  looking  at  his  statue,  "What  a  splendid 
looking  man  he  must  have  been,  how  the  women  must  have 
loved  him  I"  And  they  both  died,  and  were  buried  in  the 
church  near  where  they  lived;  and  the  English  poet  Brown- 
ing went  to  that  church,  and  heard  the  story,  and  thought 
about  it,  and  gives  us  the  moral  of  it.  It  is  a  startling  moral 
and  needs  explanation.  I  think  you  will  be  shocked  when 
you  first  hear  it,  but  you  will  not  be  shocked  if  you  think 
about  it.  The  following  verses  are  the  poet's  own  reflec- 
tions : 

So  I     While  these  wait  the  trump  of  doom, 
How  do  their  spirits  pass,  I  wonder, 
Nights  and  days  in  the  narrow  room? 

Still,  I  suppose,  they  sit  and  ponder 
What  a  gift  life  was,  ages  ago, 
Six  steps  out  of  the  chapel  yonder. 


190  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Only  they  see  not  God,  I  know, 

Nor  all  that  chivalry  of  his. 

The  soldier-saints  who,  row  on  row, 

Burn  upward  each  to  his  point  of  bliss — 

He  condemns  them.  Why*?  Because  they  did  not  do  any- 
thing. Anything*?  You  do  not  mean  to  say  that  they 
ought  to  have  committed  adultery? 

I  hear  your  reproach — "But  delay  was  best, 

For  their  end  was  a  crime."     — Oh,  a  crime  will  do 

As  well,  I  reply,  to  serve  for  a  test, 

As  a  virtue  golden  through  and  through, 

Sufficient  to  vindicate  itself 

And  prove  its  worth  at  a  moment's  view ! 

Must  a  game  be  played  for  the  sake  of  pelf? 

The  true  has  no  value  beyond  the  sham: 

As  well  the  counter  as  coin,  I  submit, 

When  your  table's  a  hat,  and  your  prize,  a  dram. 

Stake  your  counter  as  boldly  every  whit. 

Venture  as  truly,  use  the  same  skill, 

Do  your  best,  whether  winning  or  losing  it, 

If  you  choose  to  play — is  my  principle ! 

Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 

For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will ! 

The  counter  our  lovers  staked  was  lost 

As  surely  as  if  it  were  lawful  coin ; 

And  the  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 

Was  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin, 
Though  the  end  in  sight  was  a  crime,  I  say. 

In  order  to  understand  the  full  force  of  this  strange  ethical 
philosophy,  you  must  remember  that  the  word  "counter"  is 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  191 

here  a  gambling  term;  it  is  used  for  the  round  buttons  or 
disks  of  bone  or  ivory,  not  in  themselves  money,  but  repre- 
senting money  to  be  eventually  received  or  paid.  Remem- 
bering this,  we  can  simplify  Browning;  this  is  what  he  says: 
"These  people  were  the  most  contemptible  of  sinners; 
they  deliberately  threw  their  lives  away.  They  were  afraid 
to  commit  a  sin.  To  wish  to  commit  a  sin  and  to  be  afraid 
to  commit  it,  is  much  worse  than  committing  it.  All  their 
lives  those  two  dreamed  and  purposed  and  desired  a  sin; 
they  wanted  to  commit  adultery.  If  they  had  committed 
the  crime,  there  would  have  been  some  hope  for  them;  there 
is  always  hope  for  the  persons  who  are  not  afraid.  When 
a  young  man  begins  to  doubt  what  his  parents  and  teachers 
tell  him  about  virtue,  it  is  sometimes  a  good  thing  for  him 
to  test  this  teaching  by  disobeying  it.  Human  experience 
has  proclaimed  in  all  ages  that  theft  and  murder  and  adul- 
tery and  a  few  other  things  can  never  give  good  results. 
It  is  not  easy  to  explain  the  whole  why  and  wherefore  to 
a  young  person  who  is  both  self-willed  and  ignorant.  But 
let  him  try  for  himself  what  murder  means,  or  theft  means, 
or  adultery  means,  and  after  he  has  experienced  the  conse- 
quences, he  will  begin  to  perceive  what  moral  teaching  sig- 
nifies. If  he  is  not  killed,  or  imprisoned  for  life,  he  will 
very  possibly  become  wise  and  good  at  a  later  time.  Now 
in  regard  to  those  two  lovers,  they  wanted  to  have  an  ex- 
perience; and  the  experience  might  have  been  so  valuable 
to  them  that  it  would  have  given  them  a  new  soul — but  they 
were  afraid;  they  were  criminals  without  profit;  and  their 
great  sin  was  that  of  being  too  cowardly  to  commit  sin. 
Never  will  God  forgive  such  weakness  as  that  I"  Of  course 
all  great  religions  teach  that  the  man  who  wishes  to  do 
wrong  does  the  wrong  in  wishing  as  truly  as  if  he  did  it 
with  his  body;  there  is  only  a  difference  of  degree.  Now 
Browning  goes  a  little  further  than  such  religious  teaching; 
he  tells  us  that  only  wishing  under  certain  circumstances 
may  be  incomparably  worse  than  doing,  because  the  doing 


192  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

brings  about  its  punishment  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a 
hundred,  and  the  punishment  becomes  a  moral  lesson,  forc- 
ing the  sufferer  to  think  about  the  moral  aspect  of  what  he 
has  done.  That  is  why  Browning  says,  "A  sin  will  do  to 
serve  for  a  test."  But  only  to  wish  to  do,  and  not  do, 
leaves  a  person  in  the  state  of  inexperience.  There  is  an 
old  proverb,  which  is  quite  true:  "Any  man  can  become 
rich  who  is  willing  to  pay  the  price."  With  equal  truth  it 
might  be  said,  "You  can  do  anything  that  you  please  in  this 
world,  if  you  are  willing  to  pay  the  price,  but  the  price  of 
acts  and  thoughts  is  fixed  by  the  Eternal  Powers,  and  you 
must  not  try  to  cheat  them." 

Philosophers  will  tell  you  that  our  moral  laws  are  not 
always  perfect,  that  man  cannot  make  a  perfect  code  in- 
variably applicable  to  all  times  and  circumstances.  This 
is  true.  But  it  is  also  true  that  there  is  a  higher  morality 
than  human  codes,  and  when  human  law  fails  to  give  jus- 
tice, a  larger  law  occasionally  steps  in  to  correct  the  failure. 
Browning  delights  in  giving  us  examples  of  this  kind,  ex- 
traordinary moral  situations,  wrong  by  legal  opinion,  right 
by  the  larger  law  of  nature,  which  is  sometimes  divine.  A 
startling  story  which  he  tells  us,  entitled  "Ivan  Ivanovitch," 
will  show  us  how  he  treats  such  themes.  Ivan,  the  hero 
of  the  story,  is  a  wood-cutter,  who  works  all  day  in  his 
native  village,  to  support  a  large  family.  He  is  the  most 
highly  respected  of  the  young  peasants,  the  strong  man  of 
the  community,  a  good  father  and  a  good  husband.  One 
day,  while  he  is  working  out  of  doors  in  the  bitter  cold,  a 
sledge  drawn  by  a  maddened  and  dying  horse  enters  the 
village,  with  a  half  dead  woman  on  it.  The  woman  is  the 
wife  of  Ivan's  best  friend,  and  she  has  come  back  alone, 
although  she  had  taken  her  three  children  with  her  on  the 
homeward  journey.  Ivan  helps  her  into  the  house,  gives 
her  something  warm  to  drink,  caresses  her,  comforts  her, 
and  asks  at  last  for  her  story.  The  sledge  had  been  pur- 
sued by  wolves,  and  the  wolves  had  eaten  the  three  children, 


STUDIES  IN  BROWxNING  193 

one  after  another.  Ivan  listens  very  carefully  to  the  moth- 
er's relation  of  how  the  three  children  were  snatched  out 
of  the  sledge  by  the  wolves.  As  soon  as  she  has  told  every 
one  in  her  own  way,  Ivan  takes  his  sharp  axe,  and  with  one 
blow  cuts  the  woman's  head  off.  To  the  other  peasants  he 
simply  observes,  "God  told  me  to  do  that;  I  could  not  help 
it."  Of  course  Ivan  knew  that  the  woman  had  lied.  The 
wolves  had  not  taken  the  children  away  from  her:  she  had 
dropped  one  child  after  another  out  of  the  sledge  in  order 
to  save  her  own  miserable  life. 

At  the  news  of  the  murder,  the  authorities  of  the  village 
all  hurry  to  the  scene.  There  is  the  dead  body  without  its 
head,  and  the  blood  flowing,  or  rather  crawling  like  a  great 
red  snake  over  the  floor.  The  lord  of  the  village  declares 
that  Ivan  must  be  executed  for  this  crime.  The  Starosta, 
or  head  man,  takes  the  same  view  of  the  situation.  But, 
just  as  Ivan  is  about  to  be  arrested,  the  old  priest  of  the 
village,  the  Pope  as  the  peasants  call  him,  a  man  more  than 
a  hundred  years  of  age,  comes  into  the  assembly  and  speaks. 
He  is  the  only  man  who  has  a  word  to  say  on  behalf  of 
Ivan,  but  what  he  says  is  extraordinary  in  its  force  and 
primitive  wisdom.  All  of  it  would  be  too  long  to  quote. 
I  give  you  only  the  conclusion,  which  immediately  results 
in  Ivan's  being  acquitted  both  by  law  and  by  public  opinion. 

"A  mother  bears  a  child :  perfection  is  complete 
So  far  in  such  a  birth.     Enabled  to  repeat 
The  miracle  of  life, — herself  was  born  so  just 
A  type  of  womankind,  that  God  sees  fit  to  trust 
Her  with  the  holy  task  of  giving  life  in  turn. 

How  say  you,  should  the  hand  God  trusted  with  life's  torch 
Kindled  to  light  the  word — aware  of  sparks  that  scorch, 
Let  fall  the  same  ?     Forsooth,  her  flesh  a  fire-flake  stings : 
The  mother  drops  the  child!     Among  what  monstrous  things 
Shall  she  be  classed?" 

Of  course  the  old  Pope  is  speaking  from  the  Christian  point 


194i  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

of  view  when  he  says  that  perfection  is  complete  in  a  birtti ; 
he  refers  to  the  orthodox  belief  that  the  soul  of  man  is  cre- 
ated a  perfect  thing  of  its  kind,  a  perfect  spiritual  entity, 
to  be  further  made  or  marred  by  its  own  acts  and  thoughts. 
The  mother  does  not  give  birth  only  to  a  body,  but  to  a 
soul  also,  expressly  made  by  God  to  fit  that  body.  She  is 
allowed  to  repeat  the  miracle  of  creation  thus  far;  as 
mother  she  is  creator,  but  only  in  trust.  She  has  made  the 
vessel  of  the  soul;  her  most  sacred  duty  is  to  guard  that 
little  body  from  all  harm.  A  mother  who  would  even  let 
her  child  fall  to  escape  pain  herself  would  be  incomparably 
more  ignoble  than  the  most  savage  of  animals.  The  rule 
is  that  during  motherhood  even  the  animal-mother  for  the 
time  being  becomes  the  ruling  power;  the  male  animal  then 
allows  her  to  have  her  own  way  in  all  things. 

"Because  of  motherhood,  each  male 

Yields  to  his  partner  place,  sinks  proudly  in  the  scale : 

His  strength  owned  weakness,  wit — folly,  and  courage — fear, 

Beside  the  female  proved  male's  mistress — only  here. 

The  fox-dam,  hunger-pined,  will  slay  the  felon  sire 

Who  dares  assault  her  whelp :  the  beaver,  stretched  on  fire, 

Will  die  without  a  groan :  no  pang  avails  to  wrest 

Her  young  from  where  they  hide — her  sanctuary  breast. 

What's  here  then?     Answer  me,  thou  dead  one,  as  I  trow. 

Standing  at  God's  own  bar,  he  bids  thee  answer  now ! 

Thrice  crowned  wast  thou — each  crown  of  pride,  a  child — thy  charge ! 

Where  are  they  *?     Lost  ?     Enough :  no  need  that  thou  enlarge 

On  how  or  why  the  loss :  life  left  to  utter  'lost' 

Condemns  itself  beyond  appeal.     The  soldier's  post 

Guards  from  the  foe's  attack  the  camp  he  sentinels  : 

That  he  no  traitor  proved,  this  and  this  only  tells — 

Over  the  corpse  of  him  trod  foe  to  foe's  success. 

Yet — one  by  one  thy  crowns  torn  from  thee — thou  no  less 

To  scare  the  world,  shame  God — livedst !     I  hold  he  saw 

The  unexampled  sin,  ordained  the  novel  law, 

Whereof   first  instrument  was   first  intelligence 

Found  loyal  here.     I  hold  that,  failing  human  sense, 

The  very  earth  had  oped,  sky  fallen,  to  efface 

Humanity's  new  wrong,  motherhood's  first  disgrace. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  195 

Earth  oped  not,  neither  fell  the  sky,  for  prompt  was  found 
A  man  and  man  enough,  head-sober  and  heart-sound, 
Ready  to  hear  God's  voice,  resolute  to  obey. 

I  proclaim 
Ivan  Ivanovitch  God's  servant!" 

On  hearing  this  speech  the  peasantry  are  at  once  con- 
vinced; the  Russian  lord  orders  the  proclamation  to  be  made 
that  the  murderer  is  forgiven,  and  the  head  man  of  the 
village  goes  to  Ivan's  house  to  bring  the  good  news.  He 
expects  to  find  Ivan  on  his  knees  at  prayer,  very  much  afraid 
of  the  police  and  coming  punishment.  But  on  opening  the 
door  the  head  man  finds  Ivan  playing  with  his  five  children, 
and  making  for  them  a  toy-church  out  of  little  bits  of  wood. 
It  has  not  even  entered  into  the  mind  of  Ivan  that  he  did 
anything  wrong.  And  when  they  tell  him,  "You  are  free, 
you  will  not  be  punished,"  he  answers  them  in  surprise, 
"Why  should  I  not  be  free*?  Why  should  you  talk  of  my 
not  being  punished'?"  To  this  simple  mind  there  is  noth- 
ing to  argue  about.  He  has  only  done  what  God  told  him 
to  do,  punished  a  crime  against  Nature. 

The  story  is  a  strange  one;  but  not  stranger  than  many 
to  be  found  in  Browning.  None  of  his  moral  teachings  are 
at  discord  with  any  form  of  true  religion,  yet  they  are  mostly 
larger  than  the  teachings  of  any  creed.  Perhaps  this  is  why 
he  has  never  offended  the  religious  element  even  while 
preaching  doctrines  over  its  head.  The  higher  doctrines 
thus  proclaimed  might  be  anywhere  accepted;  they  might 
be  also  questioned;  but  no  one  would  deny  their  beauty  and 
power.  We  may  assume  that  Browning  usually  considers 
all  incidents  in  their  relation  to  eternal  law,  not  to  one  place 
or  time,  but  to  all  places  and  to  all  times,  because  the  results 
of  every  act  and  thought  are  infinite.  This  doctrine  espe- 
cially is  quite  in  harmony  with  Oriental  philosophy,  even 
when  given  such  a  Christian  shape  as  it  takes  in  the  beauti- 
ful verses  of  "Abt  Vogler." 


196  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Abt  Vogler  was  a  great  musician,  a  great  improvisor. 
Here  let  me  explain  the  words  "improvise"  and  "improvisa- 
tion," as  to  some  of  you  they  are  likely  to  be  unfamiliar, 
at  least  in  the  special  sense  given  to  them  in  this  connection. 
An  improvisation  in  poetry  means  a  composition  made  in- 
stantly, without  preparation,  at  request  or  upon  a  sudden 
impulse.  In  Japanese  literary  history,  I  am  told,  there  are 
some  very  interesting  examples  of  improvisation.  For  ex- 
ample, the  story  of  that  poetess  who,  on  being  asked  to 
compose  a  poem  including  the  mention  of  something  square, 
something  round,  and  something  triangular,  wrote  those 
celebrated  lines  about  unfastening  one  corner  of  a  mosquito- 
curtain  in  order  to  look  at  the  moon.  Among  Europeans 
improvisation  is  now  almost  a  lost  art  in  poetry,  except 
among  the  Italians.  Some  Italian  families  still  exist  in 
which  the  art  of  poetical  improvisation  has  been  cultivated 
for  hundreds  of  years.  But  in  music  it  is  otherwise.  Im- 
provisation in  music  is  greatly  cultivated  and  esteemed. 
Most  of  our  celebrated  musicians  have  been  great  impro- 
visors.  Those  who  heard  such  music  would  regret  that  it 
could  not  be  reproduced,  not  even  by  the  musician  himself. 
It  was  a  beautiful  creation,  forgotten  as  soon  as  made,  be- 
cause never  written  down. 

Now  you  know  what  Browning  means  by  improvisation 
in  his  poem  "Abt  Vogler."  The  musician  has  been  impro- 
vising, and  the  music,  made  only  to  be  forgotten,  is  so 
beautiful  that  he  himself  bitterly  regrets  the  evanescence 
of  it.  We  may  quote  a  few  of  the  verses  in  which  this 
regret  is  expressed;  they  are  very  fine  and  very  strange, 
written  in  a  measure  which  I  think  you  have  never  seen 
before. 

Would  that  the  structure  brave,  the  manifold  music  I  build, 
Bidding  my  organ  obey,  calling  its  keys  to  their  work, 

Claiming  each  slave  of  the  sound,  at  a  touch,  as  when  Solomon 
willed 
Armies  of  angels  that  soar,  legions  of  demons  that  lurk, 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  197 

Man,  brute,  reptile,  fly, — alien  of  end  and  of  aim, 

Adverse,  each  from  the  other  heaven-high,  hell-deep  removed, — 

Should  rush  into  sight  at  once  as  he  named  the  ineffable  Name, 
And    pile   him    a    palace    straight,    to    pleasure    the    princess    he 
loved ! 

The  musician  is  comparing  the  music  that  he  makes  to  magi- 
cal architecture;  he  refers  to  the  Mohammedan  legends  of 
Solomon.  Solomon  knew  all  magic;  and  all  men,  animals, 
angels,  and  demons  obeyed  him.  God  has  ninety-nine 
names  by  which  the  faithful  may  speak  of  him,  but  the 
hundredth  name  is  secret,  the  Name  ineffable.  He  who 
knows  it  can  do  all  things  by  the  utterance  of  it.  When 
Solomon  pronounced  it,  all  the  spirits  of  the  air  and  of 
heaven  and  of  hell  would  rush  to  obey  him.  And  if  he 
wanted  a  palace  or  a  city  built,  he  had  only  to  order  the 
spirits  to  build  it,  and  they  would  build  it  immediately, 
finishing  everything  between  the  rising  and  the  setting  of 
the  sun.  That  is  the  story  which  the  musician  refers  to. 
He  has  the  power  of  the  master-musician  over  sounds;  but 
the  sounds  will  not  stay. 

Would  it  might  tarry  like  his,  the  beautiful  building  of  mine. 

This  which  my  keys  in  a  crowd  pressed  and  importuned  to  raise ! 
Ah,   one  and   all,   how  they  helped,   would   dispart  now  and   now 
combine, 

Zealous  to  hasten  the  work,  heighten  their  master  his  praise  I 
And  one  would  bury  his  brow  with  a  blind  plunge  down  to  hell, 

Burrow  awhile  and  build,  broad  on  the  roots  of  things. 
Then  up  again  swim  into  sight,  having  based  me  my  palace  well. 

Founded  it,  fearless  of  flame,  flat  on  the  nether  springs. 

The  musician  wishes  that  his  architecture  of  sound  could 
remain,  as  remained  the  magical  palace  that  Solomon  made 
the  spirits  build  to  please  Queen  Balkis.  He  remembers 
how  beautiful  his  music  was;  he  remembers  how  the  differ- 
ent classes  of  notes  combined  to  make  it,  just  as  the  dif- 
ferent classes  of  spirits  combined  to  make  the  palace  of 
Solomon.     There  the  deep  notes,  the  bass  chords,  sank  down 


198  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

thundering  like  demon-spirits  working  to  make  the  founda- 
tion in  the  very  heart  of  the  earth.  And  the  treble  notes 
seemed  to  soar  up  like  angels  to  make  the  roof  of  gold,  and 
to  tip  all  the  points  of  the  building  with  glorious  fires  of 
illumination.  Truly  the  palace  of  sounds  was  built,  but 
it  has  vanished  away  like  a  mirage;  the  builder  cannot  repro- 
duce it.  Why  not?  Well,  because  great  composition  of 
any  kind  is  not  merely  the  work  of  man ;  it  is  an  inspiration 
from  God,  and  the  mystery  of  such  inspired  composition 
is  manifested  in  music  as  it  is  manifested  in  no  other  art. 
For  the  harmonies,  the  combinations  of  tones,  are  mysteries, 
and  must  remain  mysterious  even  for  the  musician  himself. 
Who  can  explain  them? 

But  here  is  the  finger  of  God,  a  flash  of  the  will  that  can, 

Existent  behind  all  laws,  that  made  them,  and  lo,  they  are ! 
And  I  know  not  if,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be  allowed  to  man 

That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frame  not  a  fourth  sound,  but  a  star. 
Consider  it  well ;  each  tone  of  our  scale  in  itself  is  naught : 

It  is  everywhere  in  the  world — loud,  soft,  and  all  is  said: 
Give  to  me  to  use!     I  mix  it  with  two  in  my  thought: 

And  there !     Ye  have  heard  and  seen :  consider  and  bow  the  head ! 

But  for  the  same  reason  that  they  are  mysteries  and  can- 
not be  understood  because  they  relate  to  the  infinite,  they 
are  eternal.  That  is  the  consolation.  The  musician  need 
not  regret  that  the  music  composed  in  a  moment  of  divine 
inspiration  cannot  be  remembered;  he  need  not  regret  that 
it  has  been  forgotten.  Forgotten  it  is  by  the  man  who 
made  it;  forgotten  it  is  by  the  people  who  heard  it;  forgot- 
ten it  is  therefore  by  all  mankind.  Nevertheless  it  is  eter- 
nal, because  the  Universal  Soul  that  inspired  it  never  for- 
gets anything.  I  think  that  the  verse  in  which  this  beauti- 
ful thought  is  expressed — the  verse  that  contains  the  whole 
of  Browning's  religion,  is  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  all 
his  work.     But  you  must  judge  for  yourselves: 

All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist: 
Not  its  semblance,  but  itself;  no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor  power 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  199 

Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melodist 
When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 

The  high  that  proved  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too  hard. 
The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the  sky, 

Are  music  sent  up  to  God  by  the  lover  and  the  bard ; 

Enough  that  he  heard  it  once ;  we  shall  hear  it  by  and  by. 

By  the  phrase  "when  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of 
an  hour,"  the  poet  means  when  we  ourselves,  in  a  future 
and  higher  state  of  being,  shall  see  the  worth  of  our  good 
acts  and  thoughts  proved  by  the  fact  that  they  survive  along 
with  us.  Eternity  affirms  them — that  is,  recognises  them  as 
worthy  of  immortality  by  suffering  them  to  exist.  This 
line  gives  us  the  key  to  the  philosophy  of  the  rest.  It  is 
quite  in  harmony  with  Buddhist  philosophy.  Browning 
holds  that  all  good  acts  and  thoughts  are  eternal,  whether 
men  in  this  world  remember  them  or  not.  But  what  of 
the  bad  acts  and  thoughts'?  Are  they  also  eternal?  Not 
in  the  same  sense.  Evil  acts  and  thoughts  do  indeed  exert 
an  influence  reaching  enormously  into  the  future,  but  it  is 
an  influence  that  must  gradually  wane,  it  is  a  Karma  that 
must  become  exhausted.  As  for  regretting  that  nobody 
sees  or  knows  the  good  that  we  do,  that  is  very  foolish. 
The  good  will  never  die;  it  will  be  seen  again — perhaps 
only  in  millions  of  years,  yet  this  should  make  no  difference. 
To  the  dead  the  time  of  a  million  years  and  the  time  of  a 
moment  may  be  quite  the  same  thing. 

But  you  must  not  suppose  that  Browning  lives  much  in 
the  regions  of  abstract  philosophy.  He  is  human  in  the 
warmest  way,  and  very  much  alive  to  impressions  of  sense. 
Not  even  Swinburne  is  at  times  more  voluptuous,  but  the 
voluptuous  in  Browning  is  always  natural  and  healthy  as 
well  as  artistic.  I  must  quote  to  you  some  passages  from 
the  wonderful  little  dramatic  poem  entitled  "In  a  Gondola." 
You  know  that  a  gondola  is  a  peculiar  kind  of  boat  which 
in  Venice  takes  the  place  of  carriages  or  vehicles  of  any 
kind.     In  the  city  of  Venice  there  are  no  streets  to  speak 


200  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

of,  but  canals  only,  so  that  people  go  from  one  place  to  an- 
other only  by  boat.  These  boats  or  gondolas  of  Venice  are 
not  altogether  unlike  some  of  the  old-fashioned  Japanese 
pleasure-boats;  they  have  a  roof  and  windows  and  rooms, 
and  it  is  possible  to  travel  in  them  without  being  seen  by 
anybody.  In  the  old  days  of  Venice,  many  secret  meetings 
between  lovers  and  many  secret  meetings  of  conspirators 
were  held  in  such  boats.  The  poet  is  telling  us  of  the  secret 
meeting  of  two  lovers,  at  the  risk  of  death,  for  if  the  man  is 
seen  he  will  certainly  be  killed.  At  the  end  of  the  poem 
he  actually  is  killed;  the  moment  he  steps  on  shore  he  is 
stabbed,  because  he  has  been  watched  by  the  spies  of  a 
political  faction  that  hates  him.  But  this  is  not  the  essen- 
tial part  of  the  poem  at  all.  The  essential  part  of  the  poem 
is  the  description  of  the  feelings  and  thoughts  of  these  two 
people,  loving  in  the  shadow  of  death;  this  is  very  beautiful 
and  almost  painfully  true  to  nature.  We  get  also  not  a 
few  glimpses  of  the  old  life  and  luxury  of  Venice  in  the 
course  of  the  narrative.  As  the  boat  glides  down  the  long 
canals,  between  the  high  ranges  of  marble  palaces  rising 
from  the  water,  the  two  watch  the  windows  of  the  houses 
that  they  know,  and  talk  about  what  is  going  on  inside. 

Past  we  ghde,  and  past,  and  past! 

What's  that  poor  Agnese  doing 
Where  they  make  the  shutters  fast? 

Grey  Zanobi's  just  a-wooing 
To  his  couch  the  purchased  bride : 

Past  we  glide! 

Past  we  glide,  and  past,  and  past! 

Why's  the  Pucci  Palace  flaring 
Like  a  beacon  to  the  blast? 

Guests  by  hundreds,  not  one  caring 
If  the  dear  host's  neck  were  wried : 

Past  we   glide ! 

It  is  the  man  who  is  here  looking  and  talking  and  criticising. 
The  woman  is  less  curious;  she  is  thinking  only  of  love. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  201 

and  what  she  says  in  reply  has  become  famous  in  English 
literature;  we  might  say  that  this  is  the  very  best  we  have 
in  what  might  be  called  the  "literature  of  kissing." 

The  moth's  kiss,  first! 

Kiss  me  as  if  you  made  believe 

You  were  not  sure,  this  eve, 

How  my  face,  your  flower,  had  pursed 

Its  petals  up ;  so,  here  and  there 

You  brush  it,  till  I  grow  aware 

Who  wants  me,  and  wide  open  burst. 

The  bee's  kiss,  now  I 
Kiss  me  as  if  you  entered  gay 
My  heart  at  some  noonday, 
A  bud  that  dares  not  disallow 
The  claim,  so  all  is  rendered  up. 
And  passively  its  shattered  cup 
Over  your  head  to  sleep  I  bow. 

Of  course  you  know  all  about  the  relation  of  insects  to 
flowers — how  moths,  beetles,  butterflies,  and  other  little 
creatures,  by  entering  flowers  in  order  to  suck  the  honey, 
really  act  as  fertilisers,  carrying  the  pollen  from  the  male 
flower  to  the  female  flower.  It  is  the  use  of  this  fact  from 
natural  history  that  makes  these  verses  so  exquisite.  The 
woman's  mouth  is  the  flower;  the  lips  of  the  man,  the  vis- 
iting insect.  "Moth"  is  the  name  which  we  give  to  night 
butterflies,  that  visit  flowers  in  the  dark.  What  the  woman 
says  is  this  in  substance:  "Kiss  me  with  my  mouth  shut 
first,  like  a  night  moth  coming  to  a  flower  all  shut  up,  and 
not  knowing  where  the  opening  is."  The  second  compari- 
son of  the  bee  suggests  another  interesting  fact  in  the  rela- 
tion between  insects  and  flowers.  A  bee  or  wasp,  on  finding 
it  difficult  to  enter  a  flower  from  the  top,  so  as  to  get  at  the 
honey,  will  cut  open  the  side  of  the  flower,  and  break  its 
way  in.  The  woman  is  asking  simply,  "Now  give  me  a 
rough  kiss  after  the  gentle  one."  All  this  is  mere  play,  of 
course,  but  by  reason  of  the  language  used  it  rises  far  above 


202  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

the  merely  trifling  into  the  zones  of  supreme  literary  art. 
Later  on,  we  have  another  comparison,  made  by  the  man, 
which  I  think  very  beautiful.  The  thought,  the  compari- 
son itself,  is  not  new:  from  very  ancient  times  it  has  been 
the  custom  of  lovers  to  call  the  woman  they  loved  an  angel. 
I  fancy  this  custom  is  reflected  in  the  amatory  literature  of 
all  countries ;  it  exists  even  in  Japanese  poetry.  But  really 
it  does  not  matter  whether  a  comparison  be  new  or  old; 
its  value  depends  upon  the  way  that  a  poet  utters  it. 
Browning's  lover  says: 

Lie  back ;  could  thought  of  mine  improve  you  ? 

From  this  shoulder  let  there  spring 

A  wing;  from  this,  another  wing; 

Wings,  not  legs  and  feet,  shall  move  you ! 

Snow-white  must  they  spring,  to  blend 

With  your  flesh,  but  I  intend 

They  shall  deepen  to  the  end, 

Broader,  into  burning  gold, 

Till  both  wings  crescent-wise  enfold 

Your  perfect  self,  from  'neath  your  feet 

To  o'er  your  head,  where,  lo,  they  meet 

As  if  a  million  sword-blades  hurled 

Defiance  from  you  to  the  world! 

This  is  a  picture  painted  after  the  manner  of  the  Venetian 
school;  we  seem  to  be  looking  at  something  created  by  the 
brush  of  Titian  or  Tintoretto.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  will 
seem  to  you  as  beautiful  as  it  really  is,  for  it  is  intended  to 
appeal  to  the  imagination  of  persons  who  have  actually 
seen  the  paintings  of  the  Italian  masters,  or  at  least  en- 
gravings of  them.  Angels  were  frequently  represented  by 
those  great  artists  as  clothed  with  their  own  wings,  the 
wings,  white  below,  gold  above,  meeting  over  the  head  like 
two  new  moons  joining  their  shining  tips.  What  the  poet 
means  by  "sword-blades"  are  the  long  narrow  flashing 
feathers  of  the  angel-wings,  which,  joined  all  together,  look 
like  a  cluster  of  sword-blades.     But  one  must  have  seen 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  203 

the  pictures  of  the  Italian  masters  to  appreciate  the  skill 
of  this  drawing  in  words.  Here  I  may  remind  you  that 
Dante,  in  his  vision  of  Paradise,  uses  colours  of  a  very 
similar  sort — blinding  white  and  dazzling  gold  appear  in 
the  wings  of  his  angels  also. 

The  above  examples  of  the  merely  artistic  power  of 
Browning  will  suffice  for  the  moment;  great  as  he  always 
is  when  he  descends  to  earth,  he  is  most  noteworthy  in  those 
other  directions  which  I  have  already  pointed  out,  and 
which  are  chiefly  psychological.  I  want  to  give  you  more  ex- 
amples from  the  poems  of  the  psychological  kind,  partly  be- 
cause they  are  of  universally  recognised  value  in  themselves, 
and  partly  because  it  is  these  that  make  the  distinction  be- 
tween Browning  and  his  great  contemporaries.  One  of  these 
pieces,  now  quoted  through  the  whole  English-speaking 
world,  is  "A  Grammarian's  Funeral."  This  poem  is  in- 
tended to  give  us  the  enthusiasm  which  the  students  of  the 
later  Middle  Ages  felt  for  scholarship,  the  delight  in  learn- 
ing which  revived  shortly  before  the  Renaissance.  I  sup- 
pose that  many  of  you  recollect  the  first  enthusiasm  for 
Western  studies  in  Japan;  people  then  studied  too  hard, 
tried  to  do  even  more  than  they  could  do.  So  it  was  in 
Europe  at  the  time  of  the  revival  of  learning;  men  killed 
themselves  by  overstudy.  In  this  poem  Browning  makes  us 
listen  to  the  song  sung  by  a  company  of  university  students 
burying  their  dead  teacher;  they  are  carrying  him  up  to  the 
top  of  a  high  mountain  above  the  mediaeval  city,  there  to  let 
him  sleep  forever  above  the  clouds  and  above  the  vulgarities 
of  mankind.  The  philosophy  in  it  is  very  noble  and  strong, 
though  it  be  only  the  philosophy  of  young  men. 

Let  us  begin  and  carry  up  this  corpse, 

Singing  together. 
Leave  we  the  common  crofts,  the  vulgar  thorpes 

Each  in  Its  tether 
Sleeping  safe  on  the  bosom  of  the  plain, 

Cared-for  till  cock-crow : 


204  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Look  out  if  yonder  be  not  day  again 

Rimming  the  rock-row! 
That's  the  appropriate  country ;  there,  man's  thought, 

Rarer,  intenser, 
Self-gathered  for  an  outbreak,  as  it  ought. 

Chafes  in  the  censer. 
Leave  we  the  unlettered  plain  its  herd  and  crop ; 

Seek  we  sepulture 
On  a  tall  mountain,  citied  to  the  top, 

Crowded  with  culture ! 
All  the  peaks  soar,  but  one  the  rest  excels. 

Clouds  overcome  it ; 
No !  yonder  sparkle  is  the  citadel's 

Circling  its  summit. 
Thither  our  path  lies ;  wind  we  up  the  heights ; 

Wait  ye  the  warning? 
Our  low  life  was  the  level's  and  the  night's ; 

He's  for  the  morning. 
Step  to  a  tune,  square  chests,  erect  each  head, 

'Ware  the  beholders ! 
This  is  our  master,  famous,  calm  and  dead, 

Borne  on  our  shoulders. 

Some  little  description  will  be  necessary  before  we  can  go 
further  with  the  poem.  It  was  dark,  before  daybreak,  when 
the  students  assembled  for  the  funeral,  and  it  is  still  rather 
dark  when  the  funeral  procession  starts  up  the  mountain. 
This  appears  from  the  lines,  "Look  out  if  yonder  be  not 
day  again  rimming  the  rock-row" — meaning,  see  if  that  is 
not  daylight  up  there  at  the  top  of  the  mountains. 
It  is  not  full  day,  but  they  can  see,  far  up,  the  lights  of  the 
citadel.  The  poet  wants  to  give  us  the  feeling  of  a  forti- 
fied city  of  the  Middle  Ages.  You  must  understand  that 
multitudes  of  cities,  especially  in  France  and  in  Germany, 
were  then  built  upon  mountain  tops,  so  that  they  could  be 
better  fortified  and  defended  against  attack.  Part  of  such 
a  city  would  be  of  course  on  sloping  ground.  But  the  very 
highest  place  was  always  reserved,  inside  the  city,  for  mili- 
tary purposes.  Outside  the  city  were  walls  and  ditches  and 
towers.     Inside  the  city  there  was  a  smaller  city  or  citadel. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  205 

also  suriounded  by  ditches  and  walls  and  towers,  and  oc- 
cupying the  highest  place  possible.  An  enemy,  after  cap- 
turing the  city  proper,  would  still  have  the  citadel  to  cap- 
ture, always  a  very  difficult  military  feat.  Now  you  will 
understand  better  the  suggestions  of  immense  height  in  the 
poem.  The  students  are  going  up  above  the  citadel  to  bury 
their  teacher.  They  say  that  the  place  is  appropriate  be- 
cause the  air  at  that  height  is,  like  intellectual  thought,  cold 
and  pure  and  full  of  electricity,  the  symbol  of  mental  en- 
ergy and  moral  effort.  You  may  notice  that  the  students 
are  still  somewhat  rough  in  their  ways.  It  was  a  rough 
age ;  they  do  not  intend  to  submit  to  any  interference  on  the 
way,  nor  even  to  any  curiosity,  so  the  ignorant  "beholders" 
are  bidden  to  be  very  careful. 

At  this  point  the  poem  gives  us  the  students'  account  of 
their  teacher's  life.  They  are  singing  a  song  about  it,  and 
you  must  understand  that  all  the  lines  in  parentheses  do 
not  necessarily  mean  interruptions  of  the  narrative,  though 
some  of  them  do.  A  little  careful  reading  will  make  every- 
thing clear;  then  you  will  perceive  how  very  fine  the  spirit 
of  the  whole  thing  is. 

Sleep,  crop  and  herd  I  sleep,  darkling  thorpe  and  croft, 

Safe  from  the  weather ! 
He,  whom  we  convoy  to  his  grave  aloft, 

Singing  together, 
He  was  a  man  born  with  thy  face  and  throat, 

Lyric  Apollo  I 
Long  he  lived  nameless :  how  should  Spring  take  note 

Winter  would  follow? 
Till  lo !  the  little  touch,  and  youth  was  gone ! 

Cramped  and  diminished. 
Moaned  he,  "New  measures,  other  feet  anon  I 

My  dance  is  finished?" 
No,  that's  the  world's  way:  (keep  the  mountain-side, 

Make  for  the  city!) 
He  knew  the  signal,  and  stepped  on  with  pride 

Over  men's  pity ; 
Left  play  for  work,  and  grappled  with  the  world 


206  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Bent  on  escaping  : 
"What's  in  the  scroll,"  quoth  he,  "thou  keepest  furled? 

Show  me  their  shaping, 
Theirs  who  most  studied  man,  the  bard  and  sage, — 

Give !"  so  he  gowned  him. 
Straight  got  by  heart  that  book  to  its  last  page : 

Learned,  we  found  him. 

When  his  first  students  met  him,  they  met  him  as  a  youth- 
ful and  a  learned  man;  these  latest  students  found  him  old, 
bald,  scarcely  able  to  see — and  yet  he  had  not  allowed  him- 
self any  rest.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  felt  death  was 
coming,  he  continued  to  study  day  and  night,  he  read  all  the 
books  then  existing,  and  when  he  had  read  them  all,  he 
said  only,  "Now  I  have  got  to  the  beginning  of  my  real 
studies.  The  material  is  in  my  hands;  now  I  shall  use  it." 
Sickness  or  health  made  no  difference  to  him.  This  life  he 
thought  of  only  as  the  commencement  of  eternity. 

He  said,  "What's  Time  *?     Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes ! 

Man  has  Forever!" 
Back  to  his  books  then ;  deeper  drooped  his  head : 

Calculus  racked  him : 
Leaden  before,  his  eyes  grew  dross  of  lead : 

Tussis  attacked  him. 

In  vain  did  his  friends  and  pupils  beg  him  to  take  a  little 
rest,  but  he  never  would;  he  said  that  he  must  learn  every- 
thing he  could  before  dying. 

So,  with  the  throttling  hands  of  death  at  strife, 

Ground  he  at  grammar ; 
Still,  through  the  rattle,  parts  of  speech  were  rife ; 

While  he  could  stammer 
He  settled  H oil's  business — let  it  be  ! — 

Properly  based  Oun — 
Gave  us  the  doctrine  of  the  enclitic  De, 

Dead  from  the  waist  down. 

"Hoti"  is  the  Greek  word  "that" ;  "Oun"  is  the  word  "then," 
also  "now";  it  has  other  kindred  meanings.     "De"  has  the 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  207 

meaning  of  "toward"  when  enclitic;  but  there  is  another 
Greek  word  "de"  meaning  "but."  The  reference  in  the 
poem  is  to  the  rule  for  distinguishing  the  Greek  "de"  mean- 
ing "toward"  from  the  Greek  "de"  meaning  "but."  "Cal- 
culus" is  the  disease  commonly  called  "stone  in  the  blad- 
der."    "Tussis"  is  a  cough. 

And  now  the  singers  have  brought  the  body  to  the  burial- 
place  at  the  top  of  the  mountain,  and  their  song  ends  with 
this  glorious  burst: 

Well,  here's  the  platform,  here's  the  proper  place: 

Hail  to  your  purlieus. 
All  ye  highfliers  of  the  feathered  race. 

Swallows  and  curlews  I 
Here's  the  top-peak;  the  multitude  below 

Live,  for  they  can,  there ; 
This  man  decided  not  to  Live  but  Know — 

Bury  this  man  there? 
Here — here's  his  place,  where  meteors  shoot,  clouds  form, 

Lightnings   are   loosened. 
Stars  come  and  go  I     Let  joy  break  with  the  storm, 

Peace  let  the  dew  send ! 
Lofty  designs  must  close  in  like  effects : 

Loftily  lying. 
Leave  him — still  loftier  than  the  world  suspects. 

Living  and  dying. 

We  may  turn  from  this  fine  poem  without  further  com- 
ment to  a  piece  entitled  "The  Patriot."  There  is  a  bit,  and 
a  very  bitter  bit,  of  the  true  philosophy  of  life  in  it.  Noth- 
ing is  so  fickle,  so  uncertain,  so  treacherous  as  popularity. 
Thousands  of  men  who  tried  to  get  the  applause  of  the  multi- 
tude, the  love  of  the  millions,  and  thought  that  they  had  suc- 
ceeded, found  out  at  a  later  day  how  quickly  that  applause 
could  be  turned  into  roars  of  hate,  how  quickly  that  seem- 
ing admiration  could  be  changed  into  scorn.  This  fact 
about  the  instability  of  human  favour  is  well  known  to 
every  clear  headed  person  who  enters  into  what  is  called 
the  social  struggle;  but  it  is  more  often  illustrated  in  poli- 


208  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

tics.  The  political  aspect  of  the  matter  is  the  most  re- 
markable, and  has  therefore  been  chosen  by  Browning.  I 
do  not  know  to  what  particular  person  he  may  be  making 
reference — perhaps  he  was  thinking  of  Rienzi.  But  in  all 
periods  of  history  the  fact  has  been  about  the  same.  You 
will  remember,  no  doubt,  the  case  of  Pericles  in  the  his- 
tory of  Athens,  and  of  many  others.  You  may  remember 
also  how  the  French  Revolution  devoured  its  own  children, 
how  the  men  that  were  one  day  almost  worshipped  by  the 
people  like  gods,  would  be  dragged  to  the  guillotine  the 
day  after.  And  even  in  the  history  of  this  country  I  think 
you  must  remember  not  a  few  examples  of  how  uncertain 
popular  favour  must  always  be.  In  this  case  the  victim 
speaks,  some  man  who  once  had  been  regarded  as  the  sa- 
viour of  the  people,  but  who  is  now  regarded  as  their  enemy, 
and  who  is  going  to  be  executed  as  a  common  criminal,  sim- 
ply because  he  happened  to  be  unfortunate.  He  remem- 
bers the  past,  and  contrasts  it  with  the  cruel  present : 

It  was  roses,  roses,  all  the  way, 

With  myrtle  mixed  in  my  path  like  mad: 

The  house-roofs  seemed  to  heave  and  sway, 
The  church-spires  flamed,  such  flags  they  had, 

A  year  ago  on  this  very  day. 

The  air  broke  into  a  mist  with  bells, 

The  old  walls  rocked  with  the  crowd  and  cries. 

Had  I  said:  "Good  folk,  mere  noise  repels — 
But  give  me  your  sun  from  yonder  skies  I" 

They  had  answered,  "And  afterward,  what  else?" 

Here  I  may  say  that  in  Western  countries  from  very  an- 
cient times  it  has  been  the  custom  to  cover  with  flowers  the 
road  along  which  some  great  conqueror  or  other  honoured 
person  was  to  come.  The  ancients  used  especially  roses  and 
myrtles,  but  even  to-day  it  is  often  the  custom  to  throw 
flowers  on  the  ground  before  the  passing  of  a  sovereign  or 
other  great  person.     "Like  mad"  is  an  idiom  used  to  ex- 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  209 

press  extreme  action  of  any  sort;  "to  laugh  like  mad,"  would 
be  to  laugh  unreasonably  and  extravagantly.  The  refer- 
ence to  the  apparent  movement  of  the  roots  of  the  houses  pic- 
tures the  crowding  of  people  on  the  house-tops  to  see  the 
hero,  a  custom  still  kept  up.  And  the  reference  to  the  effect 
of  the  bells  as  making  "mist,"  indicates  the  excessive  volume 
of  sound ;  for  it  is  said  that  the  firing  of  cannon  or  the  making 
of  any  other  great  noise  will  often  cause  rain  to  tall.  The 
idea  is  that  the  people  rang  the  bells  so  hard  that  the  rain 
fell,  and  these  were  what  we  call  "joy-bells." 

"If  on  that  day  of  my  triumph,"  he  says,  "I  had  asked 
them  to  give  me  the  sun,  they  would  have  answered  out  of 
their  hearts,  Certainly — and  what  else*?"  Now  it  is  very 
different  indeed. 

Alack,  it  was  I  who  leaped  at  the  sun 

To  give  it  my  loving  friends  to  keep ! 
Nought  man  could  do,  have  I  left  undone : 

And  you  see  my  harvest,  what  I  reap 
This  very  day,  now  a  year  is  run. 

There's  nobody  on  the  house-tops  now — 

Just  a  palsied  few  at  the  windows  set ; 
For  the  best  of  the  sight  is,  all  allow. 

At  the  Shambles'  Gate— or,  better  yet, 
By  the  very  scaffold's  foot,  I  trow. 

I  go  in  the  rain,  and,  more  than  needs, 

A  rope  cuts  both  my  wrists  behind ; 
And   I   think,  by  the  feel,  my   forehead  bleeds, 

For  they  fling,  whoever  has  a  mind, 
Stones  at  me  for  my  year's  misdeeds. 

What  he  says  is  this:  "I  did  not  ask  them  for  anything 
for  myself;  it  was  I  who  wanted  to  give  them  the  sun,  or 
anything  else  that  they  wished  for.  Every  possible  sacri- 
fice that  any  man  could  make  I  made  for  these  people,  and 
you  see  what  my  reward  is  to-day — just  one  year  from  the 
time  when  they  honoured  and  revered  me.     Nobody  now 


210  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

stands  on  the  house  tops  to  look  at  me;  all  have  gone  to 
the  execution  ground  to  see  me  die,  except  a  few  old  people 
who  cannot  walk,  and  who  stay  at  the  windows  to  see  me 
pass,  with  my  hands  tied  behind  my  back.  People  are 
throwing  stones  at  me,  and  I  think  my  face  is  bleeding." 
The  last  allusion  is  to  a  very  cruel  custom  only  of  late 
years  abolished  in  England  by  better  police  regulations.  In 
the  old  times,  when  a  prisoner  was  being  taken  to  the  gal- 
lows, people  would  often  strike  him,  or  throw  stones  at  him 
as  he  went  by,  and  nobody  attempted  to  protect  him.  To- 
day this  is  not  done,  simply  because  the  police  do  not  allow 
it,  but  the  natural  cruelty  of  a  mob  is  perhaps  just  as  great 
as  it  ever  was. 

Thus  I  entered,  and  thus  I  go ! 

In  triumphs  people  have  dropped  down  dead. 
"Paid  by  the  world,  what  dost  thou  owe 

Me?" — God  might  question;  now  instead, 
'Tis  God  shall  repay :  I  am  safer  so. 

These  are  the  man's  last  thoughts.  "I  came  into  this 
city  a  hero,  as  I  told  you ;  now  I  am  going  out  of  it,  to  be 
executed  like  a  vulgar  criminal.  How  much  better  would 
it  have  been  if  I  had  died  on  the  day  when  all  the  people 
were  honouring  me  I  I  have  heard  that  men  have  fallen 
dead  from  joy  in  the  middle  of  such  a  triumph  as  I  then 
had.  But  would  it  have  been  better  if  I  had  died  happy  like 
that*?  Perhaps  it  would  not.  God  is  said  to  demand  a 
strict  account  in  the  next  world  from  any  human  being  who 
has  been  too  happy  in  this.  If  I  had  died  that  day,  God 
might  have  said  to  me.  You  have  had  your  reward  from  the 
world;  have  you  paid  to  me  what  you  owed  in  love  and 
duty"?  But  now  the  world  kills  me;  it  is  from  God  only 
that  I  can  hope  for  justice.  He  is  terrible,  but  I  can  trust 
him  better  than  this  people;  I  am  safer  with  him !" 

I  am  not  sure  what  Browning  refers  to  in  speaking  of 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  211 

those  who  have  been  known  to  drop  dead  in  the  middle  of 
a  triumph.  But  perhaps  he  is  referring  to  the  story  of 
the  Sicilian,  Diagoras,  which  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  all  Greek  stories,  and  is  fortunately  quite  true.  Diagoras 
had  been  the  greatest  wrestler  among  the  Greeks,  the  great- 
est athlete  of  his  time,  and  was  loved  and  honoured  by  all 
men  of  Greek  blood.  He  had  seven  sons.  When  he  was 
a  very  old  man  these  seven  sons  went  to  contend  at  the  great 
Olympic  games  (if  I  remember  correctly).  There  were  but 
seven  prizes  for  all  the  feats  of  strength  and  skill ;  and  these 
seven  prizes  were  all  won  by  the  seven  sons  of  Diagoras — 
that  is  to  say,  they  had  proved  themselves  the  best  men  of 
the  whole  world  at  that  time,  even  the  boy  son  winning  the 
prize  given  only  to  boys.  Then  the  people  demanded  to 
know  the  name  of  the  father  of  those  young  men,  and  the 
sons  lifted  him  upon  their  shoulders  to  show  him  to  all  the 
people.  The  people  shouted  so  that  birds  flying  above 
them,  tell  down;  and  the  old  man  in  the  same  moment  died 
of  joy,  as  he  was  thus  supported  upon  the  shoulders  of  his 
sons.  The  Greeks  said  that  this  was  the  happiest  death 
that  any  man  ever  died.  Perhaps  Browning  was  referring 
to  this  story;  but  I  am  not  sure. 

Kings  have  sometimes  been  accused  of  ingratitude,  but 
on  the  whole,  kings  have  shown  more  gratitude  than  mobs; 
a  sovereign  is  apt  to  remember  that  it  is  good  policy  to  repay 
loyalty  and  to  encourage  affection.  Browning  gives  us  a 
few  magnificent  specimens  of  loyal  feeling  toward  sover- 
eigns, feeling  which  it  is  pleasant  to  know  was  not  repaid 
with  ingratitude.  I  am  referring  to  his  "Cavalier  Tunes," 
little  songs  into  which  he  has  managed  to  put  all  the  fiery 
love  and  devotion  of  the  English  gentlemen  who  fought  for 
the  king  against  Cromwell  and  his  Puritans,  and  who  fought, 
luckily  for  England,  in  vain  at  that  time.  Right  or  wrong 
as  we  may  think  their  cause,  it  is  impossible  not  to  admire 
the  feeling  here  expressed.     I  shall  quote  the  second  song 


212  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

first.  You  must  imagine  that  all  these  gentlemen  are  drink- 
ing the  health  of  the  king,  with  songs  and  cheers,  even  at 
the  time  when  the  king's  cause  seems  hopeless. 

GIVE  A  ROUSE! 

King  Charles,  and  who'll  do  him  right  now? 
King  Charles,  and  who's  ripe  for  fight  now? 
Give  a  rouse :  here's,  in  hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles  I 
{Single  voice) 

Who  gave  me  the  goods  that  went  since? 
Who  raised  me  the  house  that  sank  once? 
Who  helped  me  to  gold  I  spent  since? 
Who  found  me  in  wine  you  drank  once? 
{Chorus,  answering) 

King  Charles,  and  who'll  do  him  right  now? 
King  Charles,  and  who's  ripe  for  fight  now? 
Give  a  rouse :  here's,  in  hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles ! 
{Single  voice) 

To  whom  used  my  boy  George  quaff  else, 
By  the  old  fool's   side  that  begot  him? 
For  whom  did  he  cheer  and  laugh  else, 
While  Noll's  damned  troopers  shot  him? 
{Chorus,  answering) 

King  Charles,  and  who'll  do  him  right  now? 
King  Charles,  and  who's  ripe  for  fight  now? 
Give  a  rouse :  here's,  in  hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles ! 

The  father  is  reminding  his  friends  of  the  brave  death  of 
his  own  son,  who  died  shouting  for  the  king  and  laughing 
at  his  executioners.  I  do  not  think  that  there  is  a  more 
spirited  song  in  English  literature  than  this.  Perhaps  you 
may  observe  that  the  measure  in  the  third  stanza  does  not 
run  smoothly  like  the  measure  of  the  other  stanzas;  it  hesi- 
tates a  little.  But  this  is  a  great  stroke  of  art,  for  it  indi- 
cates the  suppressed  emotion  of  the  father  speaking  of  his 
dead  son.  The  other  song,  the  first  of  the  three  given  by 
Browning,  represents  the  feeling  of  an  earlier  time  in  the 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  213 

civil  war,  probably  the  time  when  the  aristocracy  and  gen- 
try first  gathered  together  to  defend  the  king.  There  is  a 
splendid  swing  in  it.  Both  songs  are  a  little  rough,  be- 
cause the  spirit  of  the  age  was  rough;  the  finest  gentleman 
used  to  swear  in  those  days,  and  to  use  words  which  we 
now  consider  rather  violent.  I  may  remark,  however,  that 
even  to-day  in  the  upper  ranks  of  the  English  army  and 
navy,  something  of  the  same  scorn  of  conventions  still  re- 
mains; generals  and  admirals  will  swear  occasionally  in  bat- 
tle, just  as  these  gentlemen  of  an  older  school  swore  as  they 
advanced  against  the  Puritan  armies. 

MARCHING  ALONG 

Kentish  Sir  Byng  stood  for  his  King, 

Bidding  the  crop-headed  Parliament  swing : 

And,  pressing  a  troop  unable  to  stoop 

And  see  the  rogues  flourish  and  honest  men  droop. 

Marched  them  along,  fifty-score  strong, 

Great-hearted  gentlemen,  singing  this  song. 

God  for  King  Charles !     Pym  and  such  carles 
To  the  Devil  that  prompts  'em  their  treasonous  paries  I 
Cavaliers,  up !     Lips  from  the  cup, 
Hands  from  the  pasty,  nor  bite  take  nor  sup 
Till  you're — 
{Chorus)     Marching  along,  fifty-score  strong, 

Great-hearted  gentlemen,  singing  this  song. 

Hampden  to  hell,  and  his  obsequies'  knell 
Serve  Hazelrig,  Fiennes,  and  young  Harry  as  well ! 
England,  good  cheer  !     Rupert  is  near ! 
Kentish  and  loyalists,  keep  we  not  here, 
{Chorus)     Marching  along,  fifty-score  strong, 

Great-hearted  gentlemen,  singing  this  song. 

Then  God  for  King  Charles !     Pym  and  his  snarls 
To  the  Devil  that  pricks  on  such  pestilent  carles ! 
Hold  by  the  right,  you  double  your  might ; 
So,  onward  to  Nottingham,  fresh  for  the  fight, 
{Chorus)     March  we  along,  fifty-score  strong, 

Great-hearted  gentlemen,  singing  this  song. 


gl4.  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

The  names  in  this  poem  are  all  of  them  great  names  of  the 
Civil  War.  Hampden,  you  know,  was  Parliamentary 
leader  in  the  movement  against  the  king.  He  was  killed 
in  battle,  and  his  place  as  leader  was  taken  by  Pym.  The 
other  names  are  of  members  of  the  Long  Parliament — ex- 
cept Rupert.  Rupert,  or  Prince  Rupert,  as  he  is  more 
generally  known,  was  the  leader  of  the  Royal  cavalry,  one 
of  the  most  brilliant  cavalry  leaders  of  history.  He  was 
never  beaten  seriously  until  he  met  Cromwell's  Puritan  cav- 
alry. A  reference  may  be  necessary  in  regard  to  Notting- 
ham. There  was  no  fight  exactly  at  Nottingham;  but  it 
was  at  Nottingham  that  the  cavalry  gathered  round  the 
king's  standard  before  the  battle  of  Edgehill,  near  Banbury, 
a  drawn  battle,  not  decided  either  way. 

So  much  for  the  references.  As  for  the  song  itself,  some- 
thing remains  to  be  said.  I  think  that  the  two  songs  are 
about  the  most  spirited  in  English  literature.  They  are  so 
for  many  reasons,  especially  because  of  the  fiery  emotion 
which  the  poet  has  flung  into  them,  and  because  of  their 
absolute  truth  to  the  feeling  of  the  seventeenth  century,  both 
as  to  form  and  as  to  tone.  But  I  wonder  whether  any  of 
you  have  noticed  what  it  is  that  gives  such  uncommon  force 
to  the  verses.  To  a  great  degree,  it  is  the  use  of  triple 
rhymes.  In  both  songs  the  rhymes  are  triple,  while  the 
measure  is  short,  and  the  result  is  something  of  that  rough 
strength  which  characterises  the  old  Northern  poetry.  For 
instance : 

Hold  by  the  right,  you  double  your  might. 

So  onward  to  Nottingham,  fresh   for  the  fight. 

King  Charles,  and  who'll  do  him  right  now  ? 
King  Charles,  and  who's  ripe  for  fight  now  ? 
Give  a  rouse :  here's  in  hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles ! 

You  see  that  very  great  effects  may  be  produced  by  very 
simple  means.     In  "Marching  Along,"  the  "swing"  or  "lilt" 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  215 

is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  three  rhymes  follow  each 
other  not  in  regular  but  in  irregular  succession,  a  rhymeless 
measure  alternating  between  the  second  and  the  third 
rhymes,  as  will  be  plainly  seen  if  we  write  the  verses  in 

another  form: 

Kentish  Sir  Byng 
Stood  for  his  king. 
Bidding    the    crop-headed 
Parliament   swing. 

But  I  want  to  explain  the  spirit  rather  than  the  workman- 
ship of  Browning;  and  I  have  turned  aside  here  to  the  sub- 
ject of  measure  only  because  the  instances  happened  to  be 
very  extraordinary.  The  beauty  of  the  work  is  really  in 
the  glow  and  strength  of  the  loyal  feeling  that  peals  through 
it. 

Do  not  suppose,  however,  that  the  poet  picks  out  by  pref- 
erence the  noble  or  the  attractive  side  of  human  feeling  in 
any  form  of  society,  for  his  subject.  Quite  the  contrary. 
Most  often  he  paints  the  ugly  side,  even  in  speaking  of  kings 
and  courts,  nobles  and  princes.  In  the  splendid  poem 
"Count  Gismond,"  which  I  dictated  last  year,  you  may  have 
seen  one  very  beautiful  side  of  knightly  character,  but  there 
were  horrible  phases  of  human  nature  exhibited  in  the  story. 
Browning  made  the  shadows  very  heavy,  with  the  result 
that  the  lights  appeared  more  dazzling.  Sometimes  we  have 
no  lights — all  is  shadow,  and  sometimes  a  shadow  of  hell. 
Such  is  the  case  in  the  horrible  poem  called  "The  Labora- 
tory," depicting  the  feelings  of  a  jealous  court-lady,  as  she 
stands  in  the  laboratory  of  a  chemist  who  is  selling  her  a 
poison  with  which  she  intends  to  poison  her  rival  in  the 
favour  of  the  king.  The  story  is  laid  in  the  time  of  Louis 
XIV,  probably,  when  such  things  did  actually  occur  in 
France.  A  still  blacker  shadow,  a  still  more  infernal  pic- 
ture of  humanity's  dark  side,  is  "The  Heretic's  Tragedy," 
portraying  the  wicked  feelings  of  a  superstitious  person  while 
watching  a  heretic  being  burned  alive.     Another  frightful 


«16  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

thing  is  "The  Confessional,"  a  story  of  the  Inquisition  in 
Spain,  showing  how  the  inquisitors  succeeded  in  seizing,  con- 
victing, and  burning  aUve  a  young  man,  by  taking  advan- 
tage of  the  innocence  of  his  sweetheart,  who  was  made  to 
betray  him  through  confession  without  knowing  it.  An- 
other piece  that  is  ugly  psychologically,  is  "Cristina  and 
Monaldeschi."  Cristina  was  a  queen  of  Sweden,  and  one  of 
the  most  learned  women  of  her  time,  but  very  masculine; 
she  liked  to  wear  men's  clothes  and  to  follow  the  amuse- 
ments of  men.  She  abdicated  her  throne,  merely  in  order 
to  feel  more  free  in  her  habits.  It  is  believed  that  she  se- 
cretly loved  her  private  secretary,  and  that  he  was  dishon- 
ourable enough  to  tell  other  people  of  his  relation  to  her. 
At  all  events,  one  day  she  ordered  him  to  come  into  her 
room,  and  after  upbraiding  him  with  treachery  to  her,  she 
had  him  killed  in  her  presence.  The  fact  shocked  Europe 
a  great  deal  at  the  time.  Browning  tries  to  make  us  under- 
stand Cristina's  feeling,  and  he  forces  us  to  sympathise  a 
little  with  her  anger.  There  are  multitudes  of  poems  of 
this  class  in  Browning.  He  wants  us  to  know  all  the 
strange  possibilities  of  the  human  soul,  bad  or  good,  and  he 
never  hesitates  because  a  subject  may  be  shocking  to  weak 
nerves.  It  is  just  because  he  does  not  care  about  public 
feeling,  ignorant  public  opinion,  upon  these  matters,  that 
he  manages  to  give  us  such  exact  truth;  he  is  not  afraid. 
For  a  little  bit  of  truth  thus  exemplified — this  is  not  ugly 
— let  us  take  a  little  piece  entitled  "Which*?"  Here  is  an- 
other picture  of  the  manners  of  the  old  French  court,  a  very 
corrupt  court  and  very  luxurious.  You  must  read  Taine's 
"Ancien  Regime"  to  understand  what  its  morals  were.  But 
let  us  turn  to  the  little  picture.  Three  great  ladies  are  talk- 
ing with  a  priest  about  love — a  fashionable  priest,  a  priest 
of  the  old  age,  ready  to  make  love  or  to  say  mass  just  ac- 
cording as  it  suited  his  private  interest.  A  very  good  priest 
could  scarcely  have  existed  in  the  court;  one  had  to  be  very 
clever  and  very  subtle  to  live  there.     The  conversation  of 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  217 

these  four  persons  gives  us  a  hint  of  the  feeling  of  the  age. 
Only  one  woman  really  seems  to  say  what  she  thinks;  and 
she  says  what  she  thinks  only  because  she  is  the  most  clever 
of  the  three. 

So,  the  three  Court-ladies  began 
Their  trial  of  who  judged  best 

In  esteeming  the  love  of  a  man : 
Who  preferred  with   most   reason  was  thereby  confessed 
Boy-Cupid's  exemplary  catcher  and  eager ; 
An  Abbe  crossed  legs  to  decide  on  the  wager. 

First  the  Duchesse:     "Mine  for  me — 
Who  were  it  but  God's  for  Him, 

And  the  King's  for — who  but  he? 
Both  faithful  and  loyal,  one  grace  more  shall  brim 
His  cup  with  perfection :  a  lady's  true  lover. 
He  holds— save  his  God  and  his  king — none  above  her." 

"I  require" — outspoke  the  Marquise — 
"Pure  thoughts,  ay,  but  also  fine  deeds : 

Play  the  paladin  must  he,  to  please 
My  whim,  and — to  prove  my  knight's  service  exceeds 
Your  saint's  and  your  loyalist's  praying  and  kneeling — 
Show  wounds,  each  wide  mouth  to  my  mercy  appealing." 

Then  the  Comtesse :     "My  choice  be  a  wretch, 
Mere  losel  in  body  and  soul, 

Thrice  accurst !     What  care  I,  so  he  stretch 
Arms  to  me  his  sole  saviour,  love's  ultimate  goal, 
Out  of  earth  and  men's  noise — names  of  'infidel,'  'traitor,' 
Cast  up  at  him?     Crown  me,  crown's  adjudicator!" 

And  the  Abbe  uncrossed  his  legs. 
Took  snuff,  a   reflective  pinch. 

Broke  silence :     "The  question  begs 
Much  pondering  ere  I  pronounce.     Shall  I  flinch  ? 
The  love  which  to  one  and  one  only  has  reference 
Seems  terribly  like  what  perhaps  gains  God's  preference." 

The  answer  of  the  priest,  giving  the  victory  to  the  Comtesse, 
is  clever  and  double-edged.     He  probably  knows  every- 


218  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

thing  that  goes  on  in  the  court:  he  knows  how  many  lovers 
the  Duchesse  has  had,  and  the  Marquise.  He  knows  that 
their  talk  about  religion  and  loyalty  as  the  perfections  of 
man,  are  not  quite  sincere.  Indeed,  the  Marquise  is  much 
more  sincere  than  the  Duchesse;  but  if  she  were  altogether 
sincere,  she  would  have  recognised  that  her  wish — her  ex- 
pressed wish,  at  least — must  appear  as  pure  pride,  not  any- 
thing else.  But  the  Comtesse  tells  a  bitter  truth  by  point- 
ing out  that  if  it  is  a  question  of  real  love,  the  place  and 
station  of  the  man  can  signify  nothing  at  all;  love  should 
be  a  thing  of  the  heart,  not  a  thing  of  rank  and  fashion. 
And  the  priest,  in  supporting  her  claim  and  in  saying  that  a 
true  love  can  have  reference  only  to  one  person,  really  sug- 
gests to  his  audience,  whose  love  relations  have  doubtless 
been  very  numerous,  what  he  thinks  to  be  the  opinion  of 
God  on  the  subject.  But  "perhaps,"  as  the  priest  utters 
the  word,  is  terrible  irony.  "Perhaps  gains  God's  prefer- 
ence," means  "I  know,  of  course,  that  in  the  society  to  which 
we  belong,  love  only  for  one's  husband  is  not  considered 
fashionable;  yet  the  opinions  of  God  may  not  be  the  same 
as  the  opinions  of  our  society.  It  would  not  be  polite  of 
me  to  say  directly  that  your  opinions  and  God's  opinions 
are  different,  but  I  just  hint  it."  It  was  a  very  queer  age. 
Taine,  in  his  history  of  the  time,  tells  a  story  about  a  noble- 
man who,  on  entering  his  wife's  room  suddenly  and  finding 
her  making  love  to  another  man,  took  off  his  hat  and  saluted 
her,  saying,  "Oh,  my  dear,  how  can  you  be  so  careless  I 
Suppose  it  had  not  been  your  husband  who  opened  the 
door  I"  You  must  understand  all  this,  to  understand  the 
mockery  of  the  poem.  Then,  again,  you  must  understand 
the  desire  of  the  Comtesse  even  for  the  love  of  a  "wretch," 
a  mere  losel,  as  meaning  that  here  is  a  woman  who  deserves 
to  be  loved,  but  is  not  loved  by  her  husband,  and  who  has 
learned  that  real  love  has  a  value  in  this  world  beyond  all 
value  of  rank  or  money  or  influence. 

If  you  ask  me  why  I  have  talked  so  much  about  so  short 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  219 

a  poem,  the  answer  is  that  nearly  all  of  Browning's  short 
poems  mean  a  great  deal,  and  force  us  to  think  and  to  talk 
about  them.  The  reason  is  that  the  characters  in  these 
poems  are  really  alive;  they  impress  us  exactly  as  living 
persons  do,  and  excite  our  curiosity  in  precisely  the  same 
way.  Accordingly,  notwithstanding  their  many  faults  of 
construction  and  obscure  English,  they  have  something  of 
the  greatness  of  Shakespeare's  dramas. 

It  is  now  time  to  turn  to  the  study  of  the  greatest  of  all 
Browning's  poems.  Perhaps  I  should  not  call  it  a  poem. 
It  is  rather  an  immense  poetic  drama.  As  printed  in  this 
single  volume  it  represents  four  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
pages  of  closely  printed  small  text.  It  is,  therefore,  even 
considered  as  a  dramatic  composition,  many  times  larger 
than  any  true  drama.  But  no  true  drama,  except  Shake- 
speare's, is  more  real  or  more  terrible.  Besides,  it  is  a  purely 
psychological  drama.  There  is  no  scenery,  no  narrative  in 
the  ordinary  sense.  Everything  is  related  in  the  first  per- 
son. The  whole  is  divided  into  twelve  parts,  each  of  which 
is  a  monologue.  Nearly  all  of  the  monologues  are  spoken 
by  different  persons.  The  first  monologue  is  the  author's 
own,  in  which  he  tells  us  the  meaning  of  the  title  and  the 
story  of  the  drama. 

It  is  a  true  story  of  Italian  life  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, the  chief  incident  having  really  occurred  in  the  year 
1698.  The  poet  one  day  found  in  an  old  Italian  book  shop 
a  little  book  for  sale,  which  was  the  history  of  a  celebrated 
criminal  trial.  Besides  the  book,  which  included  the 
speeches  of  the  lawyers  on  both  sides,  and  the  evidence 
given  before  the  court,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  old  manu- 
script— papers  probably  prepared  by  some  lawyer  of  the 
time  in  connection  with  the  case.  Browning  was  able  to 
buy  the  whole  thing  for  eight  pence;  that  small  sum  fur- 
nished him  with  material  for  the  most  enormous  poem  in 
the  English  language.  When  he  read  the  facts  of  the  trial, 
he  said  he  could  actually  see  all  the  characters  as  plainly 


220  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

as  if  they  were  alive,  and  could  even  hear  them  speak. 
He  soon  formed  in  his  mind  the  plan  for  his  poem;  but 
it  was  a  peculiar  plan.  The  plan  is  indicated  by  the  title 
of  "The  Ring  and  the  Book."  In  Italy  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  beautiful  light  gold  work  made — for  rings  especially, 
which  looks  so  delicate  that  at  first  sight  you  cannot  under- 
stand how  it  was  made.  In  a  gold  ring  there  are  leaves 
and  flowers  and  fruits  and  insects,  so  lightly  made  that  even 
if  you  let  the  ring  fall  they  would  be  injured  or  destroyed. 
Gold  is  very  soft.  In  order  to  cut  the  gold  in  this  way,  the 
goldsmith  uses  a  hard  composition  with  which  he  covers 
the  gold  work,  and  after  the  carving  and  engraving  have 
been  done,  this  composition  is  melted  off,  so  that  only  the 
pure  gold  is  left,  with  all  the  work  upon  it.  Browning  says 
that  he  made  his  book  somewhat  in  the  same  way  that  the 
Italian  goldsmith  makes  his  ring — by  the  use  of  an  alloy. 
The  facts  of  history  and  of  law  represent  the  gold  in  this 
case,  and  the  poet  mixes  them  with  an  alloy  of  imagina- 
tion, emotion,  sympathy,  which  helps  him  to  make  the  whole 
story  into  a  perfectly  rounded  drama,  a  complete  circle,  a 
Ring.     This  is  the  meaning  of  the  title. 

I  shall  first  tell  you  the  story  briefly,  according  to  the 
historical  facts.  About  the  year  1679  there  was  a  family 
in  Rome  of  the  name  of  Comparini.  The  family  consisted 
only  of  husband  and  wife;  but  it  happened  that  the  fact 
of  their  being  without  children  proved  a  legal  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  obtaining  some  money  which  they  greatly  de- 
sired. The  wife,  Violante,  knew  that  her  husband  was  too 
honest  to  wish  to  cheat  the  law,  so  she  determined  to  try 
to  get  the  money  without  letting  him  know  her  deceit  in  the 
matter.  She  pretended  to  have  given  birth,  unexpectedly, 
to  a  child,  but  the  child  had  really  been  bought  from  a  woman 
of  loose  life — it  was  a  very  pretty  female  child,  and  was 
called  Francesca  Pompilia.  Little  Pompilia  was  supposed 
to  be  the  real  child  of  the  Comparini ;  and  the  much  desired 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  221 

money  thus  passed  into  their  hands.  This  is  the  first  act  of 
the  tragedy. 

Pompilia  grew  up  into  a  wonderfully  beautiful  girl ;  and 
when  she  was  thirteen  years  old,  many  people  wished  to 
marry  her.  Guido  Franceschini,  Count  of  Arezzo,  noticed 
the  girl's  beauty,  and  heard  that  she  was  rich.  He  deter- 
mined to  marry  her  if  possible,  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  her 
money.  He  was  a  wicked  old  m'an,  between  fifty  and  sixty 
years  of  age,  ugly,  cunning,  and  poor.  But  he  had  im- 
mense influence,  both  among  the  nobility  and  among  the 
church  dignitaries,  on  account  of  his  family  relations ;  and  he 
was  himself  of  high  rank.  The  marriage  was  negotiated 
successfully.  Pompilia,  a  child  of  thirteen,  could  not 
naturally  have  wished  to  marry  this  horrible  old  man,  but 
she  had  been  taught  to  obey  her  parents  as  she  obeyed  Al- 
mighty God,  and  when  she  was  told  to  marry  him  she'  mar- 
ried him  without  one  word  of  complaint.  By  this  marriage 
the  wicket  Count  got  into  his  hands  all  the  property  of  the 
Comparini  family,  but  it  had  been  promised  that  the  parents 
of  the  girl  were  to  live  in  the  palace  of  the  Count,  and  to 
be  taken  care  of  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  Nevertheless,  as 
soon  as  the  Count  had  everything  in  his  hands,  he  turned  the 
old  parents  out  of  his  house,  in  a  state  of  absolute  destitu- 
tion; he  had  taken  from  them  their  daughter  and  all  their 
money,  everything  that  they  had  in  the  world.  This  is  the 
second  act  of  the  tragedy. 

Naturally  the  Comparini  family  were  very  angry.  The 
mother  of  the  girl  was  so  angry  that  she  told  her  husband 
all  about  the  trick  which  she  had  played  in  passing  off 
Pompilia  for  her  own  child.  Pompilia,  you  know,  was  not 
her  real  child  at  all.  This  changed  the  legal  aspect  of  the 
matter.  Old  Comparini  went  to  the  Count  and  said,  "You 
took  our  money,  and  thought  that  you  were  taking  our 
daughter.  But  you  must  give  back  that  money.  The  girl 
is  not  our  daughter;  the  money  does  not  belong  to  her:  it 


222  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

will  have  to  be  given  back  to  the  government  that  we  de- 
ceived."    This  is  the  third  act  of  the  tragedy. 

The  Count  was  equal  to  the  occasion.  He  understood  the 
law;  but  he  understood  it  much  better  than  the  Comparini 
people.  So  long  as  he  kept  Pompilia  as  his  wife,  he  knew 
that  he  could  keep  the  money.  If  he  divorced  her,  on  the 
ground  that  she  was  of  vulgar  origin,  then  he  would  have 
to  give  up  the  money.  But  this  was  not  the  only  alterna- 
tive. There  was  a  third  possibility.  If  Pompilia  com- 
mitted adultery,  then  he  could  either  kill  her  or  get  rid 
of  her  and  keep  the  money  notwithstanding.  Pompilia  was 
a  weak  child  only  thirteen  years  old.  He  was  a  wicked  and 
terrible  man,  with  half  a  century  of  experience,  diabolical 
cunning,  diabolical  cruelty,  and  ferocious  determination. 
He  could  make  her  commit  adultery.  That  would  be  the 
simplest  possible  solution  of  the  difficulty.  But,  strange 
to  say,  this  terrible  man  could  not  conquer  that  delicate  child 
of  thirteen.  First  he  tried  to  appeal  to  her  passions,  to  ex- 
cite her  imagination  in  an  immoral  way.  But  her  heart 
was  too  pure  to  be  corrupted.  There  was  in  her  no  spur 
of  lust.  She  was  a  simple  good  pure  wife,  too  pure  for 
any  wicked  ideas  to  be  planted  in  her  mind.  Then  he 
tried  force,  atrocious  cruelty,  horrible  menace,  always  with- 
out letting  her  know  what  he  really  intended.  What  he 
really  intended  was  to  force  her  to  run  away  from  him. 
She  could  not  run  away  except  in  the  company  of  a  pro- 
tector. If  she  ran  away  with  a  protector,  then  he  could 
kill  both  her  and  the  man  and  claim  that  he  had  detected 
the  two  in  adultery.  After  having  tortured  the  girl  hide- 
ously, in  every  moral  and  immoral  way,  he  did  succeed  in  get- 
ting her  to  ask  for  protection.  She  first  asked  protection 
from  priests  and  bishops.  The  priests  and  bishops  were 
afraid  of  the  Count,  and  told  her,  like  the  cowards  that  they 
were,  that  they  could  not  help  her.  She  wanted  to  become  a 
nun.  The  nuns  were  afraid  of  the  Count,  and  refused  her 
prayer.     At  last  she  did  find  one  priest,  a  brave  man,  who 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  223 

was  willing  to  save  her  if  possible.  He  said,  "You  must  run 
away  with  me,  though  it  will  look  very  bad ;  there  is  no  other 
way  to  help  you."  She  ran  away  with  him.  Within 
twenty-four  hours  the  pair  were  overtaken  by  the  Count 
and  his  company  of  armed  men.  The  opportunity  to  kill 
Pompilia  and  her  "lover"  had  come;  but  the  so-called 
"lover,"  although  only  an  honest  poor  priest,  showed  fight, 
and  protected  Pompilia  against  the  Count  and  all  his  fol- 
lowers. The  priest  refused  to  surrender  Pompilia  except 
to  the  Church.  The  Church  arrested  both.  Pompilia  was 
put  into  a  convent  for  safe  keeping.  The  priest  was  tried 
for  adultery,  and  acquitted.  But  he  had  done  wrong  by 
breaking  the  law  of  the  Church  even  for  a  good  purpose; 
therefore  he  was  sentenced  to  banishment  for  a  certain  num- 
ber of  years.     This  is  the  fourth  act  of  the  tragedy. 

The  Count  finds  that  all  his  plans  have  failed.  He  has 
not  been  able  to  convict  his  wife  of  adultery,  although  he 
has  been  able  to  injure  her  reputation  in  the  opinion  of  the 
public.  He  cannot  get  rid  of  her,  and  keep  her  money  too, 
except  by  killing  her.  But  she  is  in  the  convent.  While 
he  is  thinking  what  to  do,  another  event  happens  which 
upsets  all  his  calculations.  Pompilia  gives  birth  to  a  child 
of  which  he  certainly  is  the  father.  The  money  question, 
the  legal  aspect  of  it,  is  still  more  complicated  by  the  birth 
of  the  child.  At  once  the  Count  determines  to  kill  Pompilia 
and  her  parents,  out  of  revenge.  He  knows  that  on  cer- 
tain days  she  goes  to  visit  her  parents.  He  watches  for 
such  an  occasion,  and  with  the  help  of  some  professional 
murderers,  he  kills  the  Comparini,  and  stabs  Pompilia 
twenty-two  times  with  a  dagger.  He  imagined  that  this 
could  be  done  so  as  to  remain  undiscovered;  he  thought 
that  the  crime  could  not  be  proved  upon  him.  But  poor 
Pompilia  is  very  hard  to  kill.  x\lthough  her  slender  body 
was  thus  stabbed  through  and  through  by  a  powerful  man, 
she  did  not  die  at  once ;  her  wonderful  youth  kept  her  alive 
long  enough  to  tell  the  police  what  had  happened.     The 


224  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

Count  and  his  hired  murderers  were  arrested  and  thrown 
into  prison.     This  is  the  fifth  act  of  the  tragedy. 

It  is  one  thing  to  find  the  author  of  a  crime,  and  put  him 
into  prison ;  it  is  a  very  different  thing  to  convict  and  punish 
him.  The  Count  was  very  powerful  with  the  army,  with 
the  nobility,  with  the  Church;  everybody  in  his  native  city 
was  more  afraid  of  him  than  of  the  devil.  Nothing  is  so 
hard  to  get  in  this  world  as  justice.  The  Count's  powerful 
friends  and  relations  all  united  to  defend  him,  Dukes 
and  great  captains,  cardinals  and  bishops  and  abbots  and 
priests,  rich  merchants,  influential  statesmen,  all  combined 
to  secure  his  acquittal.  They  obtained  the  services  of  great 
lawyers.  They  used  money  and  threats  to  corrupt  wit- 
nesses or  to  terrify  them.  Yet  there  was  one  thing  neces- 
sary to  secure  his  acquittal — evidence  that  the  deed,  which 
he  cannot  deny,  was  justified  by  adultery.  An  attempt  was 
made  to  blacken  the  character  of  the  murdered  wife.  But 
this  evidence  was  overthrown  in  the  court,  and  the  judges 
pronounced  sentence  of  death.  Thereupon  all  the  Count's 
friends  made  an  appeal  to  the  Pope;  the  Pope  can  save  the 
Count,  if  pressure  be  brought  of  a  sufficient  sort  upon  his 
judgment.  But  the  Pope  happened  to  be  a  good  man,  and 
a  keen  man.  He  examines  the  evidence.  He  sees  the 
truth.  He  understands  the  innocence  and  beauty  of  the 
character  of  the  murdered  Pompilia;  he  comprehends  also 
the  innocence  and  the  courage  of  the  priest  who  tried  to  de- 
fend her.  He  sends  word  to  the  prison  that  the  Count  must 
be  executed  immediately.  So  justice  is  obtained,  at  least 
so  far  as  the  punishment  of  murder  can  be  called  justice. 
But  what  becomes  of  the  money*?  The  nuns  of  the  con- 
vent in  which  Pompilia  died,  they  get  the  money  by  very 
discreditable  means,  and  they  keep  it.  The  terrible 
Franceschini  family  cannot  try  to  get  that  money  from 
the  convent ;  for  the  convent  means  the  power  of  the  Church ;' 
and  the  power  of  the  Church  is  even  more  terrible  than  the 
power  of  the   Franceschini.     Of  course   the   Pope  knows 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  225 

nothing  of  this  matter;  the  Pope  is  the  finest  character  in 
the  whole  story.  Historically  this  Pope  was  Innocent  XII, 
but  his  character,  as  drawn  in  the  study  of  Browning,  is 
much  more  like  the  character  of  one  of  his  predecessors, 
Innocent  XL 

Now  I  have  told  you  the  story,  or  rather  the  history  of 
the  real  tragedy,  which  happened  something  more  than  two 
hundred  years  ago.  You  can  imagine  how  complicated  the 
whole  thing  is,  from  the  very  short  summary  which  I  have 
made.  Now  if  you  had  to  treat  a  story  like  this  dramati- 
cally, how  would  you  do  it?  where  would  you  begin?  in 
what  way  could  you  hope  to  make  artistic  order  out  of  such 
confusion'?  The  task  might  have  puzzled  even  Shake- 
speare. It  puzzled  Browning  for  more  than  a  year  before 
he  felt  how  the  thing  was  possible  to  manage.  When  I 
tell  you  the  way  in  which  he  treated  the  whole  material  of 
the  case,  I  think  you  will  perceive  that  only  a  genius  could 
have  thought  of  the  way. 

As  I  have  said.  Browning  divides  his  poem  into  twelve 
parts;  and  each  part  is  a  monologue.  I  shall  now  give 
you  in  paragraphs  as  brief  as  possible,  the  subject  of  each 
monologue.  You  had  better  follow  the  order  of  the  book, 
using  Roman  numerals  at  the  beginning  of  each  paragraph, 
and  putting  the  title  of  the  book  in  Italic  letters : 

I.  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  Interpretation  of  the  title, 
and  history  of  the  crime  and  the  trial  as  told  in  the  ancient 
legal  documents.  This  monologue  represents  the  author's 
speaking  only. 

II.  Half-Rome.  Public  opinion  is  always  divided  upon 
any  extraordinary  event.  Browning  here  tries  to  give  us 
one  side  of  public  opinion  in  the  year  1698,  upon  tlie 
Franceschini  murder.  The  monologue  represents  the  ideas 
of  a  man  of  the  society  of  that  time. 

III.  ^he  Other  Half  Rome.  This  monologue  represents 
the  contrary  opinion  on  the  subject.  But  it  is  a  curious 
fact  that  neither  form  of  public  opinion  even  approaches 


226  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

the  truth.     Both  sides  are  absolutely  mistaken,  and  very 
unjust  to  poor  Pompilia. 

IV.  Tertiutn  Quid  (i.e.,  "a  third  somebody"  or  "party"). 
This  opinion  is  quite  different  from  that  of  the  two  halves 
of  Rome,  but  it  is  equally  far  from  the  truth. 

V.  Count  Guido  Franceschini.  Notice  that  although  the 
three  forms  of  opinion  previously  expressed  all  contradict 
each  other,  and  all  are  untrue,  nevertheless  every  one  of 
them  seems  true  while  you  read  it.  So  does  the  story  of 
Count  Guido  Franceschini,  the  murderer,  in  his  own  de- 
fence. Although  you  have  been  prejudiced  against  him 
from  the  beginning,  when  you  first  read  his  side  of  the 
story  you  cannot  help  thinking  that  it  is  a  very  reasonable 
and  very  true  story.  He  says  in  substance  that  he  made  a 
great  mistake  in  marrying  so  young  a  girl,  that  she  dis- 
liked him,  that  he  did  everything  in  his  power  to  obtain  her 
affection  and  to  make  her  happy,  that  she  ran  away  from  his 
house  with  a  monk,  that  even  after  that  he  was  willing  to 
make  every  allowance  for  her,  but  that  at  last  it  was  im- 
possible for  him,  without  losing  all  self-respect,  not  to 
punish  her  crimes,  and  those  of  her  infamous  parents.  He 
makes  an  excellent  speech,  this  Count  Guido  Franceschini. 

VI.  Giuseppe  Caponsacchi.  This  is  the  good  priest,  the 
true  loyal  man  that  tried  to  save  Pompilia,  He  tells  his 
story  with  perfect  truthfulness  and  simplicity,  and  you 
know  that  it  is  true.  But  at  the  same  time  you  feel  that 
no  one  can  believe  it.  The  evidence  is  against  the  priest. 
Although  he  is  innocent,  everybody  laughs  at  his  protesta- 
tions of  innocence. 

VII.  Pompilia.  This  is  the  most  horrible  part  of  the 
book.  It  is  a  monologue  by  Pompilia  telling  of  the  cruelty 
and  the  atrocious  wickedness  of  her  husband.  It  makes 
your  blood  run  cold  to  read  it,  but  you  know  that  nobody 
would  believe  that  story  in  a  court  of  justice.  It  is  too 
terrible,  too  unnatural.  Those  who  hear  it  only  think  that 
Pompilia  is  a  very  cunning  wicked  woman,  trying  to  make 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  .      227 

people   hate   her   husband,    in   order   to   excuse   her   own 
adultery. 

VIII.  Dominus  Hyocinthus  de  Archangelis,  Pauperum 
Procurator.  The  speech  of  the  lawyer  for  the  defence,  very 
cautious,  very  learned,  very  cunning.  It  was  in  those  days 
the  custom  to  argue  such  cases  partly  in  Latin,  and  the 
papers  were  made  out  in  Latin.  "Dominus,"  "lord,"  was 
the  Latin  title  of  lawyer.  "Pauperum  Procurator"  means 
the  advocate  or  counsel  of  the  poor ;  persons  without  money 
enough  to  procure  legal  services  in  the  ordinary  way,  might 
be  furnished  with  a  lawyer  employed  by  the  state. 

IX.  Juris  Doctor  J ohannes-Battista^  &c.  The  speech 
of  the  lawyer  on  the  other  side,  equally  learned,  equally 
cunning,  and  equally  cautious.  The  reader  is  forced  to  the 
conclusion  that  neither  of  these  lawyers  really  understands 
the  truth  of  the  case.  Both  are  telling  untruth,  and  both 
are  afraid  of  the  truth.  But  you  will  notice  that  the  law- 
yer who  should  speak  in  favour  of  Pompilia  really  does  her 
more  harm  than  the  lawyer  whose  duty  it  is  to  speak  against 
her.  This  is  the  result  of  cowardice  and  self-interest  on 
both  sides. 

X.  The  Pope.  A  beautiful  study  of  character.  For  the 
first  time  we  learn  the  truth  in  this  tenth  monologue,  so  that 
we  feel  it  is  all  there,  and  not  to  be  mistaken  by  any  one 
who  hears  it. 

XI.  Guido.  Horrible.  The  murderer's  confession  of 
his  own  character. 

XII.  The  Book  and  the  Ring.  Conclusion,  and  moral 
commentary. 

I  believe  there  is  only  part  of  this  whole  drama  that  has 
been  seriously  called  into  question  by  critics — the  last  line 
of  the  eleventh  monologue,  where  Guido  cries  out,  "Pom- 
pilia, will  you  let  them  murder  me?"  The  question  is 
whether  the  poet  is  right  in  representing  this  terrible  man 
in  such  a  passion  of  fear  that  he  calls  to  his  dead  wife  to 
help  him.     Certainly  it  is  a  general  rule  that  the  man  ca- 


228  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

pable  of  studied  cruelty  to  women  and  children — to  the 
weak,  in  short — is  a  coward  at  heart.  But  there  are  excep- 
tions to  this  rule,  and  a  great  many  remarkable  Italian  ex- 
ceptions. Again  many  tribes  of  savages  contradict  the  rule, 
being  at  once  brave  and  cruel.  I  think  that  the  criticism 
in  this  case  may  have  been  largely  inspired  by  the  history 
of  certain  Italian  families,  who  were  cruel  indeed,  but  fe- 
rociously brave  as  well.  However,  Browning  studied  the 
facts  for  his  characters  very  closely,  and  he  may  be  right 
in  representing  Guido  as  a  coward.  He  has  been  proved 
to  be  both  treacherous  and  avaricious  by  the  evidence  in  the 
case,  and  although  prudence  may  sometimes  be  mistaken  for 
cowardice,  there  were  some  facts  brought  out  by  witnesses 
that  seem  to  show  the  man  to  have  been  as  much  of  a  coward 
as  he  was  a  miser. 

Now  observe  the  immense  psychological  work  that  this 
treatment  of  the  story  involves — the  study  of  nine  or  ten 
completely  different  characters,  no  one  of  whom  could  re- 
semble a  character  of  the  nineteenth  century,  not  at  least 
in  the  matter  of  thought  and  speech.  To  create  these  was 
almost  as  wonderful  as  to  call  the  dead  of  two  hundred 
years  ago  out  of  their  graves,  a  veritable  necromancy.  This 
work  alone  would  make  the  book  a  marvellous  thing.  But 
the  book  is  more  than  marvellous;  it  is  in  the  highest  de- 
gree philosophically  instructive.  Almost  anything  that 
happens  in  this  world  is  judged  somewhat  after  the  fashion 
of  the  judgments  delivered  in  the  "Ring  and  the  Book." 
For  example,  let  us  suppose  an  episode  in  Tokyo  to-day, 
rather  than  an  episode  in  Italy  two  hundred  years  ago,  a 
case  of  killing.  At  first  when  the  mere  fact  of  the  killing 
is  known,  there  is  a  great  curiosity  as  to  the  reason  of  it, 
and  different  newspapers  publish  different  stories  about  it, 
and  different  people  who  knew  both  parties  express  differ- 
ent opinions  as  to  the  why  and  how.  You  may  be  sure 
that  none  of  these  accounts  is  perfectly  true — they  could 
not  be  true,  because  those  from  whom  the  accounts  come 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  229 

have  no  perfect  knowledge  of  the  antecedents  of  the  crime. 
But  presently  the  case  comes  before  the  criminal  court,  with 
lawyers  on  both  sides,  to  prosecute  and  to  defend.  Each 
does  his  duty  the  very  best  he  can,  one  trying  to  convict, 
one  trying  to  secure  acquittal.  But  do  these  know  the 
real  story  from  beginning  to  end*?  Probably  not.  It  is 
very  seldom  indeed  that  a  lawyer  can  learn  the  inside,  the 
psychological,  history  of  a  crime.  He  learns  only  the  naked 
facts,  and  he  must  theorise  largely  from  these  facts.  Fi- 
nally the  judge  pronounces  judgment.  Does  the  judge 
know  all  about  the  matter^  Almost  certainly  not.  His 
duty  is  fixed  by  law  in  rigid  lines,  and  he  cannot  depart 
from  those  lines;  he  can  sentence  only  according  to  the 
broad  conclusions  which  he  draws  from  the  facts.  And 
after  the  whole  thing  is  over,  still  the  real  secrets  of  the 
two  parties,  of  the  criminal  and  the  victim,  remain  forever 
unknown  in  a  majority  of  cases.  Now  what  does  this 
prove *?  It  proves  that  human  judgment  is  necessarily  very 
imperfect,  and  that  nothing  is  so  difficult  to  learn  as  the 
absolute  truth  of  motives  and  of  feelings,  even  when  the 
truth  of  the  facts  is  unquestionable.  Browning's  book  tells 
us  more  than  this;  it  shows  us  that  in  some  cases,  where 
power  and  crime  are  on  one  side,  and  poverty  and  virtue 
upon  the  other,  the  chances  against  truth  being  able  to  make 
itself  heard  are  just  about  a  thousand  to  one.  Of  course 
the  world  is  a  little  better  to-day  than  two  hundred  years 
ago;  murder  is  less  common,  justice  is  less  corrupt.  But 
allowing  for  these  things,  the  chances  of  a  man  persecuted 
by  a  rich  corporation,  without  reason,  perhaps  with  mon- 
strous cruelty,  to  obtain  even  a  hearing,  would  be  scarcely 
better  than  those  of  Pompilia  in  the  story  of  "The  Ring 
and  the  Book." 

So  much  for  the  teaching.  There  is  more  than  teaching, 
however;  there  are  studies  of  character  truly  Shakespearian. 
Pompilia  is  quite  as  sweet  a  woman  as  Shakespeare's  Cor- 
delia.    Her  sweetness  is  altogether  shown  by  a  multitude  of 


230  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

details,  little  words  and  thoughts  and  feelings,  that  we  find 
scattered  through  her  account  of  her  terrible  sufferings. 
The  author  never  interrupts  his  speakers;  he  makes  them 
describe  themselves.  In  the  case  of  the  Pope,  we  are 
brought  into  the  presence  of  a  very  superior  intellect — one- 
sided, perhaps,  but  immensely  strong  in  the  direction  of 
moral  judgment;  the  mind  of  an  old  man  whose  entire  life 
has  been  spent  in  the  finest  study  of  human  nature  from 
an  ethical  point  of  view,  of  human  nature  in  its  manifesta- 
tions of  good  and  evil.  Nothing  but  this  long  experience 
helps  him  to  see  exactly  how  matters  stand.  The  evidence 
brought  before  him  is  hopelessly  confused,  and  where  not 
confused,  the  facts  are  against  Pompilia  and  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  murderer.  Moreover,  the  murderer  is  power- 
ful in  the  Church,  with  all  the  influence  of  clergy  and  no- 
bility upon  his  side.  But  the  old  man  can  see  through  the 
entire  plot;  he  cuts  it  open,  gets  to  the  heart  of  it,  perceives 
everything  that  was  hidden.  What  is  the  lesson  of  his 
character'?  I  think  it  is  this,  that  a  pure  nature  obtains, 
simply  by  reason  of  its  unselfishness  and  purity,  certain 
classes  of  perceptions  that  very  cunning  minds  never  can 
obtain.  Very  cunning  people  are  peculiarly  apt  to  make 
false  judgments,  because  they  are  particularly  in  the  habit 
of  looking  for  selfish  motives.  They  judge  other  hearts  by 
their  own.  A  pure  nature  does  not  do  this;  it  considers 
the  motive  in  the  last  rather  than  the  first  place,  preferring 
to  judge  kindly  so  long  as  the  evidence  allows  it.  Intel- 
lectual training  cannot  always  compensate  for  purity  of 
character. 

The  studies  of  Guido  himself,  which  are  very  horrible, 
are  especially  studies  of  the  man  of  the  Renaissance.  We 
have  had  other  studies  of  this  kind  in  other  poems  of  Brown- 
ing, some  of  which  I  have  already  quoted  to  you.  But 
there  is  a  special  moral  in  this  study  of  Guido,  the  moral 
that  a  really  wicked  man  must  hate  a  really  good  woman, 
simply  for  the  reason  that  she  is  good.     Then  we  have  in 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  231 

the  two  lawyers,  two  pictures  of  conflicting  selfish  interests, 
of  selfishness  and  falsehood  combined  to  defeat  the  truth, 
not  because  truth  is  necessarily  unpleasant  to  the  lawyer, 
but  because  he  wants  to  make  no  enemies  by  exposing  it. 
This  is  the  way  of  the  world  to-day,  and  although  these 
men  speak  the  language  of  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, their  feelings  are  those  of  the  shrewd  and  selfish  mod- 
ern man  of  society,  the  man  who  has  no  courage  in  the  face 
of  wrong,  if  his  pocket  happens  to  be  in  danger.  We  like 
only  three  characters  in  the  whole  drama — Pompilia,  the 
Pope,  and  Caponsacchi.  Yet  there  is  nothing  very  re- 
markable about  Caponsacchi,  except  in  the  way  of  con- 
trast. He  is  the  one  character  who,  although  his  life  and 
interests  and  reputation  are  at  stake,  boldly  risks  every- 
thing simply  for  a  generous  impulse.  Happily  he  is  not 
extraordinary;  if  he  were,  one  would  lose  faith  in  so  terrible 
a  world.  Happily  we  know  that  wherever  and  whenever 
a  great  wrong  is  done,  there  will  always  be  a  Caponsacchi 
to  speak  out  and  to  do  all  that  is  possible  against  it.  But 
Caponsacchi  is  crushed;  and  even  the  Pope  is  obliged  to 
punish  him  for  doing  what  is  noble.  This  is  one  of  the 
moral  problems  of  the  composition.  The  man  who  wants 
to  do  right,  and  cannot  do  right  except  by  disobedience  to 
law,  may  be  loved  for  doing  right,  but  he  must  be  punished 
nevertheless  for  breaking  the  law.  Does  this  mean  that 
he  is  punished  for  doing  right?  I  think  we  should  not 
look  at  it  in  that  way.  The  truth  is  that  the  observance  of 
discipline  must  be  insisted  upon  even  in  exceptional  cases, 
because  it  regards  the  happiness  of  millions.  We  cannot 
allow  men  to  decide  for  themselves  when  discipline  should 
be  broken.  Caponsacchi  is  thus  a  martyr  in  the  cause  of 
individual  justice.  He  has  to  pay,  justly,  the  penalty  of 
setting  a  dangerous  example  to  thousands  of  others.  But 
he  is  not  on  that  account  less  estimable  and  lovable,  and 
even  the  Pope,  in  punishing  him,  gives  him  words  of  warm 
praise. 


232  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

The  consideration  of  this  huge  poem  ought  also  to  tempt 
some  of  you  at  a  later  day  to  try  some  application  of  its 
method  to  some  incident  of  real  life.  I  do  not  now  mean 
in  poetry,  but  in  prose.  If  you  know  enough  about  human 
nature  to  make  the  attempt,  there  is  no  better  way  of  telling 
a  story.  It  was  a  pure  invention  on  the  part  of  Brown- 
ing, and  we  may  call  it  a  new  method.  But  of  course  one 
must  have  a  very  great  power  of  reading  character  to  be 
able  to  do  anything  of  the  same  kind. 

This  is  the  most  colossal  attempt  in  psychology  made 
by  Browning,  but  a  large  number  of  his  longer  poems  are 
worked  out  in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  single  mono- 
logues. "The  Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb,"  another  Italian 
study,  gives  us  all  the  ugly  side  of  the  Renaissance  char- 
acter— its  selfishness,  lust,  hypocrisy,  and  ambition,  together 
with  that  extraordinary  sense  of  art  which  gave  a  certain 
greatness  even  to  very  bad  men.  "Bishop  Blougram's  Apol- 
ogy" (which  is  said  to  be  a  satire  upon  a  famous  English 
Cardinal)  is  quite  modern,  but  it  is  almost  equally  ugly. 
It  shows  us  a  very  powerful  mind  arguing,  with  irre- 
sistible logic  and  merciless  cleverness,  in  an  absolutely  un- 
worthy cause.  The  bishop  has  heard  a  young  free  thinker 
observe  that  the  bishop  could  not  believe  the  doctrines  of 
the  church,  he  was  too  clever  a  bishop  for  that.  So  he 
calls  the  young  man  to  him,  and  utterly  crushes  him  by  a 
very  clever  lecture,  in  which  he  proves  that  belief  or  un- 
belief are  equally  foolish,  that  right  and  wrong  are  inter- 
changeable, that  black  may  be  white  or  white  black,  that 
common  sense  and  a  knowledge  of  the  world  represent  the 
highest  wisdom,  and  that  the  free  thinker  is  an  absolute 
fool  because  he  tells  the  world  that  he  is  a  free  thinker.  We 
know  that  the  bishop  is  morally  wrong  the  whole  way 
through,  that  every  statement  which  he  makes  is  wrong; 
yet  it  would  take  a  clever  man  to  prove  him  wrong.  The 
logic  is  too  well  managed.  Few  psychological  studies  are 
comparable  to  this.     "Mr.   Sludge,   'the  Medium,'  "   said 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  233 

to  be  a  satire  upon  the  great  Scottish  spiritualist  and  hum- 
bug, Home,  shows  us  another  kind  of  quackery ;  a  man  who 
lives  by  imposture  explains  to  us  how  he  can  practise  im- 
posture witti  a  good  moral  conscience,  and  under  the  belief 
that  imposture  is  a  benefit  to  mankind.  He  talks  so  well 
that  he  obliges  even  the  person  who  has  detected  his  im- 
posture to  lend  him  or  give  him  a  considerable  sum  of 
money — in  short,  he  can  trick  even  those  who  know  his 
trickery.  But  see  how  different  these  beings  are  from  each 
other,  and  how  different  the  studies  of  their  character  must 
necessarily  prove.  Yet  Browning  seems  never  to  find  any 
difficulty  in  painting  the  mind  of  a  man,  whether  good  or 
bad,  whether  of  to-day  or  of  the  Middle  Ages.  "Par- 
acelsus," for  example,  is  a  mediaeval  character;  Browning 
makes  him  tell  us  the  story  of  his  researches  into  alchemy 
and  magic,  makes  him  impart  to  us  the  secret  ambition  that 
once  filled  him,  and  the  consequences  of  disappointment  and 
of  failure.  "Sordello,"  again,  is  of  the  thirteenth  century; 
you  will  find  his  name  in  the  great  poem  of  Dante.  Sor- 
dello was  a  poet  and  troubadour,  who  tried  to  succeed 
socially  and  politically  by  the  exercise  of  a  brilliant  talent, 
and  almost  did  succeed.  Browning's  poem  on  him  is  the 
whole  story  of  a  human  soul ;  only,  it  is  the  man  him- 
self who  tells  it.  And  the  moral  is  that  suffering  and  sor- 
row bring  wisdom.  How  various  and  how  wonderful  is 
this  range  of  character-study  I  Yet  I  have  mentioned  only 
a  few  out  of  scores  and  scores  of  compositions.  I  cannot 
insist  too  much  upon  this  quality  of  versatility  in  Brown- 
ing, this  display  of  Shakespearian  power.  In  all  Tenny- 
son you  will  find  scarcely  more  than  twenty  really  dis- 
tinct characters;  and  some  of  these  are  but  half  drawn. 
In  Rossetti  you  will  find  scarcely  more  than  half  a  dozen, 
mostly  women.  In  Swinburne  there  is  no  character  what- 
ever, except  the  poet's  own,  outside  of  that  grand  singer's 
dramatic  work.  But  in  Browning  there  are  hundreds  of 
distinct  characters,  and  there  is  nothing  at  all  vague  about 


234  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

them;  they  speak,  they  move,  they  act  with  real  and  not 
with  artificial  life.  Sometimes  a  character  may  occupy  a 
hundred  pages,  sometimes  it  may  be  drawn  in  half  a  dozen 
lines,  but  the  drawing  is  equally  distinct  and  equally  true. 
And  there  is  scarcely  any  kind  of  human  nature  of  which 
we  have  no  picture.  Even  the  lowest  type  of  savage  is 
drawn,  the  primitive  savage,  for  "Caliban  upon  Setebos" 
gives  us  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  such  a  savage  about 
God — God  being  figured  in  the  savage  mind,  of  course,  as 
only  a  much  stronger  and  larger  kind  of  savage,  possessing 
magical  power. 

In  all  his  poems,  as  I  said.  Browning  is  essentially  dra- 
matic. Quite  rightly  has  he  grouped  several  collections 
of  short  poems  under  titles  which  suggest  this  fact,  such 
as  "Dramatic  Idyls,"  "Dramatis  Personse,"  "Men  and 
Women."  Sometimes  the  poet  himself  is  the  only  speaker 
and  actor,  giving  us  his  own  particular  feelings  of  the  mo- 
ment; but  in  the  most  noteworthy  cases  of  this  kind  he  is 
talking,  not  to  the  reader,  but  to  ghosts.  For  instance, 
"Parleyings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  in  Their 
Day,"  are  imaginary  conversations  which  Browning  holds 
with  the  ghosts  of  men  long  dead — writers,  philosophers, 
statesmen,  priests.  It  is  in  this  collection  that  you  will  find 
the  remarkable  verses  on  the  great  poem  of  Smart,  which 
revived  Smart's  work  for  modern  readers  after  a  hundred 
years  of  oblivion.  I  cannot  find  time  to  tell  you  about  the 
other  personages  of  these  imaginary  conversations;  but  I 
may  mention  that  Mandeville  is  the  subject  of  a  special 
conversation,  and  that  you  will  find  the  whole  germ  of 
Mandeville's  philosophy  in  this  composition.  But  let  us 
turn  to  some  consideration  of  Browning's  work  in  the  true 
dramatic  form — in  plays,  tragedies  or  comedies,  and  in  trans- 
lations of  plays  from  the  Greek. 

It  would  require  several  lectures  to  give  a  summary  of 
Browning's  plays;  and  they  do  not  always  represent  his 
best  genius.     For  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  this  man  who,  as 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  235 

a  simple  poet,  was  the  greatest  of  English  dramatists  after 
Shakespeare,  was  rarely  quite  successful  when  he  attempted 
the  true  dramatic  form.  He  was  great  in  the  monologue; 
he  was  not  great  upon  the  stage.  Some  of  his  plays  were 
acted,  such  as  "Strafford"  and  "The  Blot  on  the  'Scutch- 
eon"; but  they  did  not  prove  to  be  worthy  of  great  suc- 
cess. "In  a  Balcony,"  which  could  not  be  put  upon  the 
stage  at  all,  is  much  better;  and  perhaps  it  is  better  be- 
cause it  consists  only  of  two  monologues,  or  rather  of  a 
conversation  between  two  persons;  for  the  part  taken  by 
the  other  actors  is  altogether  insignificant.  "The  Return 
of  the  Druses"  and  "Luria,"  like  Tennyson's  dramas,  are 
excellent  poetry,  but  they  are  not  suited  for  the  stage.  The 
best  of  all  Browning's  dramas,  the  only  one  that  I  really 
want  you  to  read,  is  "A  Soul's  Tragedy."  I  may  say  a 
word  about  the  plot  of  this.  It  is  a  stor}'  of  friendship  be- 
tween two  young  men,  patriots  and  statesmen.  In  a  politi- 
cal crisis  one  of  the  young  men  stabs  a  political  enemy,  and 
has  fled  from  the  country.  But  before  fleeing,  he  trusts  all 
his  interests  and  his  property  to  his  friend,  and  asks  the 
friend  also  to  take  care  of  his  betrothed.  What  does  the 
friend  do'?  Exposed  to  great  temptation,  he  betrays  his 
trust.  He  sees  a  chance  to  obtain  political  power  by  pre- 
tending to  be  the  man  who  really  stabbed  the  politician  on 
the  other  side — the  tyrant  of  an  hour.  The  people  acclaim 
him  as  their  saviour,  make  him  dictator.  Then  he  goes 
further  in  his  treachery,  by  making  love  to  his  friend's 
sweetheart.  At  last  a  Roman  statesman,  Ogniben,  appears 
upon  the  scene,  with  power  to  crush  the  revolution,  or  to 
do  anything  that  he  pleases.  But  Ogniben  is  a  terribly 
clever  man,  and  he  does  not  want  blood-shed;  he  knows  the 
character  of  the  new  dictator,  and  determines  to  play  with 
him,  as  a  cat  with  a  mouse.  First  he  flatters  him  enough 
to  make  him  betray  all  his  weaknesses,  his  vanities,  his  fears. 
Then,  at  quite  the  unexpected  moment,  he  summons  the 
young  man  who  had  run  away,  I  mean  the  friend  betrayed, 


236  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

and  brings  him  face  to  face  with  the  treacherous  dictator. 
The  result  is  of  course  a  moral  collapse;  that  is  the  real 
Soul's  Tragedy.  I  am  giving  only  a  thin  skeleton  of  the 
plot.  But  you  ought  to  read  this  play,  if  only  for  the 
wonderful  studies  of  character  in  it,  not  the  least  remark- 
able of  which  is  the  awful  Ogniben,  far-seeing,  cunning 
beyond  cunning,  strong  beyond  force,  who  can  unravel  plots 
with  a  single  word  and  pierce  all  masks  of  hypocrisy  with 
a  single  glance;  but  whom  you  feel  to  be,  in  a  large  way, 
generous  and  kindly,  and  so  far  as  possible,  just.  I  think 
not  only  that  this  is  Browning's  greatest  play,  but  that  as  a 
play  it  is  psychologically  superior  to  anything  else  which 
has  been  done  in  Victorian  drama.  It  is  not  fit  for  the 
stage,  and  it  is  not  even  very  great  as  poetry — indeed  half 
of  it  or  more  is  prose,  and  rather  eccentric  prose;  but  it  offers 
wonderful  examples  of  analytical  power  not  surpassed  in 
any  other  contemporary  poet  or  dramatist. 

About  Browning's  translations  from  the  Greek  poets,  I 
scarcely  know  what  to  say.  Most  critics  of  authority  ac- 
knowledge that  Browning  has  made  the  most  faithful  metri- 
cal translation  of  the  "Agamemnon"  of  iEschylus.  But 
they  also  declare  that  in  spite  of  its  exactness,  the  Greek 
spirit  and  feeling  have  entirely  vanished  under  Browning's 
treatment.  My  own  feeling  about  the  matter  is  that  you 
would  do  much  better  to  read  the  prose  translation  of 
iEschylus.  Yet  I  could  not  say  this  in  regard  to  Brown- 
ing's translation  of  the  "Alkestis"  of  Euripides,  which  you 
will  find  embodied  in  the  text  of  "Balaustian's  Adventure." 
Balaustian  is  a  Greek  dancing  girl.  She  is  taken  pris- 
oner with  many  Athenian  people  at  the  time  of  the  disas- 
trous Greek  expedition  to  Syracuse,  which  you  must  have 
read  about  in  history.  To  please  her  captors,  she  repeats 
for  them  the  wonderful  verses  of  Euripides,  by  which  they 
are  so  much  affected  that  they  pardon  both  her  and  her 
companions.  This  incident  is  founded  upon  fact,  and 
Browning  uses  it  very  well   to   introduce  his  translation. 


STUDIES  IN  BROWNING  237 

Perhaps  the  genius  of  Euripides  was  closer  to  the  genius 
of  Browning  than  that  of  ^schylus;  for  this  translation  is 
incomparably  better  from  an  emotional  point  of  view  than 
the  other.  It  is  very  beautiful  indeed;  and  even  after  hav- 
ing read  the  Greek  play  in  a  good  prose  translation,  I  think 
that  you  would  find  both  pleasure  and  profit  in  reading 
Browning's  verses. 

The  important  thing  now  for  you  to  get  clearly  into  your 
minds  is  one  general  fact  about  this  enormously  various 
work  of  Browning.  Suppose  somebody  should  ask  you 
what  is  different  in  the  work  of  Browning  from  that  of  all 
other  modern  poets,  what  would  you  be  able  to  answer? 
But  unless  you  can  answer,  the  whole  value  of  this  lecture 
would  be  lost  upon  you.  Browning  himself  has  excellently 
answered,  in  a  little  verse  which  forms  the  prologue  to  the 
second  series  of  the  Dramatic  Idyls. 

"You  are  sick,  that's  sure," — they  say : 
"Sick  of  what?" — they  disagree. 
"  'Tis  the  brain," — thinks  Doctor  A ; 
"  'Tis  the  heart," — holds  Doctor  B. 
"The  fiver — my  fife  I'd  lay!" 
"The  lungs!"     "The  lights!"     Ah  me! 
So  ignorant  of  man's  whole 
Of  bodily  organs  plain  to  see — 
So  sage  and  certain,  frank  and  free, 
About  what's  under  lock  and  key — 
Man's  soul ! 

That  is  to  say,  even  the  wisest  doctors  cannot  agree  about 
the  simple  fact  of  a  man's  sickness,  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  they  have  studied  anatomy  and  physiology  and  oste- 
ology,  and  have  examined  every  part  of  the  body.  Yet, 
although  the  wisest  men  of  science  are  obliged  to  confess 
that  they  cannot  tell  you  everything  about  the  body,  which 
can  be  seen,  even  ignorant  persons  think  that  they  know 
everything  about  the  soul  of  a  man,  which  cannot  be  seen 
at  all,  and  about  the  mind  of  a  man,  to  which  only  God 


238  STUDIES  IN  BROWNING 

himself  has  the  key.  Now  all  the  purpose  of  Browning's 
work  and  life  has  been  to  show  people  what  a  very  wonder- 
ful and  complex  and  incomprehensible  thing  human  charac- 
ter is — therefore  to  show  that  the  most  needful  of  all  study 
is  the  study  of  human  nature.  He  is  especially  the  poet  of 
character,  the  only  one  who  has  taught  us,  since  Shake- 
speare's time,  what  real  men  and  women  are,  how  differ- 
ent each  from  every  other,  how  unclassifiable  according  to 
any  general  rule,  how  differently  noble  at  their  best,  how 
differently  wicked  at  their  worst,  how  altogether  marvellous 
and  infinitely  interesting.  His  mission  has  been  the  mis- 
sion of  a  great  dramatic  psychologist.  And  if  anybody  ever 
asks  you  what  was  Robert  Browning,  you  can  answer  that 
he  was  the  great  Poet  of  Human  Character — not  of  char- 
acter of  any  one  time  or  place  or  nation,  but  of  all  times  and 
places  and  peoples  of  which  it  was  possible  for  him  to  learn 
anything. 

Here  we  must  close  our  little  studies  of  Victorian  poets 
— that  is  to  say,  of  the  four  great  ones.  I  hope  that  you 
will  be  able  to  summarise  in  your  own  mind  the  main  char- 
acteristic of  each,  as  I  have  tried  to  indicate  in  the  case  of 
Browning.  Remember  Tennyson  as  the  greatest  influence 
upon  the  language  of  his  mother  country,  because  of  his  ex- 
quisiteness  of  workmanship  and  his  choice  of  English  sub- 
jects in  preference  to  all  others.  He  is  the  most  English 
of  all  the  four.  Remember  Rossetti  as  being  altogether 
different  in  his  personality  and  feeling — a  man  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  born  into  the  nineteenth  century,  and  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  still  the  poet  of  mediaeval  feeling.  And 
think  of  Swinburne — the  greatest  musician  of  all,  the  most 
perfect  master  of  form  and  sound  in  modern  poetry — as  an 
expounder  of  Neo-Paganism,  of  another  Renaissance  in  the 
world  of  literature. 


CHAPTER  VI 
WILLIAM  MORRIS 

William  Morris  suffers  by  comparison  with  the  more  ex- 
quisite poets  of  his  own  time  and  circle.  Nevertheless  he 
is  quite  great  enough  to  call  for  a  special  lecture.  I  am  not 
sure  whether  I  shall  be  able  to  make  you  much  interested 
in  him;  but  I  shall  certainly  try  to  give  you  a  clear  idea  of 
his  position  in  English  poetry  as  something  entirely  distinct, 
and  very  curious. 

A  few  words  first  about  the  man  himself — in  more  ways 
than  one  the  largest  figure  among  the  Romantics.  He  was 
the  great  spirit  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  coterie;  he  was  the 
most  prolific  poet  of  the  century;  and  he  was  in  all  respects 
the  nearest  in  his  talent  and  sentiment  to  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
All  these  reasons  make  it  necessary  to  speak  of  him  at  con- 
siderable length. 

He  was  born  in  1834  and  died  in  1896,  so  that  he  is  very 
recent  in  his  relation  to  English  poetry.  There  was  noth- 
ing extraordinary  in  the  incidents  of  his  life  at  school  or  in 
his  university  career.  In  this  man  the  extraordinary  gift 
was  altogether  of  the  mind.  Without  the  eccentricity  of 
genius,  he  was  also  without  the  highest  capacity  of  genius; 
but  in  his  life  as  well  as  in  his  poetry  he  was  always  correct 
and  always  charming  in  a  certain  gentle  and  dreamy  way. 
He  had  the  stature  and  strength  of  a  giant,  perfect  health, 
and  immense  working  capacity,  and  did  very  well  whatever 
he  tried  to  do.  Fortunately  for  his  inclinations,  he  was  the 
son  of  a  rich  man  and  never  knew  want;  so  that  when  he 
took  to  literature  as  a  profession,  he  never  had  to  think 
about  pleasing  the  public,  nor  to  care  how  much  money  his 
books  might  bring.     After  leaving  Oxford  University  he 

239 


240  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

devoted  his  life  to  art  and  literature,  becoming  equally  well 
known  as  a  painter  and  a  poet.  At  a  later  day  he  estab- 
lished various  businesses  for  an  esthetic  purpose.  For  ex- 
ample, he  thought  that  the  early  Italian  printers  and  Vene- 
tian printers  had  done  much  better  work  and  produced  much 
more  wonderful  books  than  any  modern  printer;  and  he 
founded  a  press  for  the  purpose  of  producing  modern  books 
in  the  same  beautiful  way.  Then  he  thought  that  a  reform 
in  the  matter  of  house  furniture  was  possible.  The  furni- 
ture of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  had  been 
good,  solid,  costly,  and  beautiful;  but  the  later  furniture 
had  become  both  cheap  and  ugly.  Morris's  artistic  inter- 
ests had  led  him  to  study  furniture  a  great  deal ;  he  became 
familiar  with  the  furniture  of  the  Middle  Ages,  of  the 
Elizabethan  Age,  and  of  later  times,  as  scarcely  any  man 
of  the  day  had  become.  It  occurred  to  him  that  the  best 
and  most  beautiful  forms  of  mediseval  and  later  furniture 
might  be  reintroduced,  if  anybody  would  only  take  pains 
to  manufacture  them.  The  ordinary  manufacturers  of  fur- 
niture would  not  do  this.  Morris  and  a  few  friends  estab- 
lished a  factory,  and  there  designed  and  made  furniture 
equal  to  anything  in  the  past.  This  undertaking  was  suc- 
cessful, and  it  changed  the  whole  fashion  of  English  house 
furnishing.  Only  a  decorative  artist  like  Morris  would 
have  been  capable  of  imagining  and  carrying  out  such  a 
plan;  and  it  was  carried  out  so  well  that  almost  every  rich 
house  in  England  now  possesses  some  furniture  designed 
by  him. 

Thus  you  will  see  that  he  must  have  been  a  very  busy 
man,  occupied  at  once  with  poetry,  with  romance  (for  he 
wrote  a  great  many  prose  romances),  with  artistic  printing, 
with  house  furniture,  with  designs  for  windows  of  stained 
glass,  and  with  designs  for  beautiful  tiling — also  with  a 
very  considerable  amount  of  work  as  a  decorative  artist. 
All  this  would  appear  almost  too  much  for  any  one  person  to 
attempt.     But  it  was  rendered  easy  to  Morris  by  the  simple 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  241 

fact  that  the  whole  of  his  various  undertakings  happened 
to  be  influenced  by  exactly  the  same  spirit  and  motive,  the 
artistic  feeling  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  of  the  period  ending 
with  the  eighteenth  century.  Whether  Morris  was  making 
books  of  poetry  or  books  of  prose,  whether  he  was  translat- 
ing sagas  from  the  Norse  or  writing  stories  in  imitation  of 
the  early  French  romances,  whether  he  was  casting  Italian 
forms  of  type  for  the  making  of  beautiful  books  or  design- 
ing furniture  for  some  English  palace,  whatever  he  was 
doing,  he  had  but  one  thought,  one  will — to  reproduce  the 
strange  beauty  of  the  Middle  Ages.  There  was  almost 
nothing  modern  about  the  man.  The  whole  of  his  writings, 
comprising  a  great  many  volumes,  contained  scarcely  ten 
pages  having  any  reference  to  modern  things.  Even  the 
language  that  he  used  has  been  correctly  described  by  a 
great  critic  as  eighteenth  century  English,  mixed  with  Scan- 
dinavian idioms  and  forms.  Thus  there  were  two  men 
among  the  Pre-Raphaelites  who  actually  did  not  belong  to 
their  own  century — Rossetti  and  Morris.  Both  were  paint- 
ers as  well  as  poets,  and  though  the  former  was  the  greater 
in  both  arts,  the  practical  influence  of  Morris  counted  for 
much  more  in  changing  English  taste  both  in  literature  and 
in  sesthetics. 

We  have  chiefly  to  consider  his  writing,  and,  of  that  writ- 
ing, especially  the  poetry.  As  a  poet  I  have  already  men- 
tioned him  as  having  points  of  resemblance  with  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  But  he  also  had  even  more  points  of  resemblance 
with  Chaucer.  He  was  like  Scott  in  the  singular  ease  and 
joyous  force  of  his  creative  talent.  Scott  could  sit  down 
and  write  a  romance  in  verse  beautifull)',  correctly,  with- 
out any  more  difficulty  than  other  men  write  prose.  Byron, 
3'ou  know,  used  to  write  his  poetry  straight  off,  without  even 
taking  the  trouble  to  correct  it;  as  a  consequence  it  is  now 
becoming  forgotten.  But  Scott  took  very  great  trouble  to 
make  his  verse  quite  correct,  without  trying  to  be  exquisite, 
and  his  verse  will  always  count  as  good,  stirring  English 


242  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

poetry.  Morris  had  almost  exactly  the  same  talent,  the 
talent  that  can  give  you  a  three-volume  story  either  in  verse 
or  prose,  just  as  you  may  prefer.  And  he  wrote  in  verse 
on  a  scale  that  astonishes,  a  scale  exceeding  that  of  any 
modern  poet.  To  find  his  equal  in  production  we  must  go 
back  to  the  poets  of  those  romantic  Middle  Ages  which  he 
so  much  loved,  the  poets  who  wrote  vast  epics  or  romances 
in  thirty  or  forty  thousand  lines.  Eleven  volumes  of  verse 
and  fifteen  volumes  of  prose  represent  Morris's  production; 
and  the  extraordinary  thing  is  that  all  his  production  is 
good.  It  does  not  reach  the  very  highest  place  in  litera- 
ture ;  no  man  could  write  so  much  and  make  his  work  of  the 
very  highest  class.  But  it  is  good  as  to  form,  good  as  to 
feeling,  much  beyond  mediocrity  at  all  times;  and  some- 
times it  rises  to  a  level  that  is  only  a  little  below  the  first 
class. 

I  am  not  going  to  give  selections  from  his  larger  works, 
so  I  can  only  mention  here  what  the  large  works  signify  and 
how  he  is  related  to  Chaucer  through  one  of  them.  The 
most  successful,  in  a  popular  sense,  of  all  his  poems  is  the 
"Earthly  Paradise,"  originally  published  in  five  volumes, 
now  published  in  four — and  the  volumes  are  very  thick. 
This  vast  composition  is  much  on  the  plan  of  the  "Canter- 
bury Tales";  and  Morris  and  Chaucer  both  followed  the 
same  method,  and  were  filled  with  the  same  sense  of  beauty. 
Both  found  in  the  legends  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  in  the 
myths  of  antiquity,  material  for  their  art  in  the  shape  of 
stories;  and  as  these  stories  had  no  inter-relation,  belonging 
even  to  widely  different  epochs  of  human  civilisation,  it  was 
necessary  to  imagine  some  general  plan  according  to  which 
all  could  be  brought  harmoniously  together,  like  jewels, 
upon  a  single  tray.  This  plan  of  uniting  heterogeneous 
masses  of  fiction  or  legends  into  one  artistic  circle  was  known 
to  the  East  long  before  it  was  known  in  Europe;  the  great 
Indian  collections  of  stories,  such  as  the  Panchatantra  and 
the  Katha-sarit-sagara,  are  perhaps  the  oldest  examples ;  and 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  243 

the  huge  Sanskrit  epics  show  something  of  the  same  design, 
afterwards  adopted  by  Arabian  and  Persian  story-tellers. 
But  Chaucer  was  the  first  to  make  the  attempt  with  any 
success  in  English  literature.  His  plan  was  to  have  the 
stories  told  by  pilgrims  travelling  on  their  way  to  Canter- 
bury, every  man  or  woman  of  the  company  being  obliged 
to  tell  one  or  two  stories.  The  plan  was  so  good  that  it 
has  been  followed  in  our  own  day;  Longfellow's  "Tales  of 
a  Wayside  Inn"  are  constructed  upon  precisely  the  same 
principle.  But  Chaucer  made  a  plan  so  large  that  he  had 
not  the  strength  nor  the  time  to  carry  it  to  completion; 
Morris,  upon  a  scale  nearly  as  large,  brought  his  work  to  a 
happy  conclusion  with  the  greatest  ease.  He  makes  a  com- 
pany of  exiled  warriors  tell  the  stories  of  a  foreign  court,  as 
results  of  their  experience  or  knowledge  obtained  in  many 
different  countries.  There  are  twenty-four  stories,  twelve 
mediseval  or  romantic  and  twelve  classical;  and  each  pair 
of  these  corresponds  with  one  of  the  twelve  months,  the  first 
two  stories  being  told  in  January,  the  second  two  in  Feb- 
ruary, and  so  forth.  The  division  neatly  partitions  the  great 
composition  into  twelve  books,  with  the  regular  prologues 
and  epilogues  added.  The  English  are  not  apt  to  trouble 
themselves  to  read  very  long  poems  these  days;  but  Morris 
was  able  actually  to  revive  the  mediseval  taste  for  long 
romances.  Tens  of  thousands  of  his  books  were  sold,  not- 
withstanding their  costliness,  and  the  result  was  altogether 
favourable  for  the  new  development  of  romantic  feeling,  not 
only  in  literature,  but  in  art  and  decoration.  One  might 
suppose  that  such  composition  was  enough  to  occupy  a  life- 
time, but  Morris  threw  it  off  quite  lightly  and  set  to  work 
upon  a  variety  of  poetical  undertakings  nearly  as  large. 
He  translated  Homer  and  Virgil  into  the  same  kind  of 
flowery  verse;  and  he  put  the  grand  Scandinavian  epic  of 
Sigurd  the  Volsung  into  some  of  the  finest  long-lined  poetry 
produced  in  modern  times.  This  epic  seems  to  me  the  bet- 
ter work  of  the  two  long  productions  by  which  Morris  is 


244  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

best  known;  later  on  some  lines  from  it  may  be  quoted. 
But  Morris  was  scarcely  less  attracted  by  Greek  myths  than 
by  the  old  literature  of  Scandinavia;  and  he  also  produced 
a  long  epic  poem  upon  the  story  of  Jason  and  Medea,  the 
story  of  the  Golden  Fleece.  Nevertheless,  I  can  much 
better  illustrate  to  you  what  Morris  is  in  literature  and  what 
his  influence  and  his  objects  were,  by  means  of  his  still 
earlier  and  shorter  poems.  There  are  several  volumes  of 
these,  now  published  in  more  compact  form  under  the  titles 
of  "Poems  by  the  Way"  and  "Love  is  Enough"  and  "The 
Defense  of  Guinevere."  From  the  last,  originally  dedi- 
cated to  Rossetti,  I  will  make  some  quotations  that  will 
show  you  how  Morris  tried  to  revive  the  Middle  Ages. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  things  in  the  late  Mr. 
Froude's  charming  account  of  a  voyage  which  he  made  to 
Norway,  is  his  statement  of  a  sudden  conviction  that  there 
came  to  him  about  the  character  of  the  ancient  Vikings. 
He  felt  assured,  he  said,  that  the  modern  Norwegian  and 
the  ancient  Norwegian  were  very  much  the  same ;  that  mod- 
ern customs,  religion,  and  education  had  produced  only  dif- 
ferences of  surface;  and  that  if  we  could  go  back  against 
the  stream  of  time  to  the  age  of  the  sea  kings,  we  should 
find  that  the}^  were  exactly  like  the  men  of  to-day  in  all 
that  essentially  belongs  to  race  character.  Now  Morris, 
while  studying  mediaeval  romances  and  loving  them  for  their 
intrinsic  curious  beauty,  came  to  a  very  similar  conclusion. 
It  is  true,  he  thought,  that  the  Middle  Ages  were  much  more 
cruel,  more  ignorant,  more  savage  than  the  ages  before  them 
or  after  them;  but  after  all,  the  men  and  women  of  those 
times  must  have  felt  about  many  things  just  like  modern 
men  and  women.  Why  should  we  not  feel  enough  of  this 
to  study  their  fashions,  joys,  and  feelings  under  the  peculiar 
conditions  of  their  terrible  society?  And  this  is  what  he 
did.  You  may  say  that,  except  for  some  difference  in  the 
home  speech,  the  talk  of  these  people  in  the  poems  of  Morris 
is  the  talk  of  modern  men  and  women.     There  is  some  dif- 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  245 

ference  as  to  sentiment.  But  you  cannot  say  that  it  is  not 
natural,  not  likely;  in  fact,  the  seeming  pictures  often  have 
such  force  that  you  cannot  forget  them.  That  is  a  test  of 
truth. 

They  are  very  brief  pictures,  like  sudden  glimpses  caught 
during  a  flash  of  lightning:  a  glimpse  into  an  arena  where 
two  men  are  about  to  fight  to  the  death  in  presence  of  their 
king,  according  to  the  code  of  the  day;  a  knight  riding 
through  a  flooded  country  in  order  to  take  a  castle  by  sur- 
prise; a  woman  driven  to  madness  by  the  murder  of  her 
lover;  a  woman  at  the  stake  about  to  be  burned  alive,  when 
the  sound  of  the  hoofs  of  the  lover's  horse  is  heard,  as  he 
gallops  to  her  rescue;  ladies  in  the  upper  chamber  of  a  cas- 
tle, weaving  and  singing;  the  capture  of  a  robber  and  his 
vain  pleading  for  life;  also  some  fairy  tales  of  weird  and 
sensuous  beauty,  told  as  people  of  the  Middle  Ages  must 
have  felt  them.  To  me  one  of  the  most  powerful  pictures 
is  the  story  of  "The  Haystack  in  the  Floods."  We  are  not 
told  how  the  tragedy  began,  nor  how  it  ended;  and  this  is 
great  art  to  tell  something  without  beginning  and  without 
end,  so  well  that  the  reader  is  always  thereafter  wondering 
what  the  beginning  was  and  what  the  end  might  have  been. 
The  poem  begins  with  the  words: 

Had  she  come  all  the  way  for  this 
To  part  at  last  without  a  kiss? 
Yea,  had  she  borne  the  dirt  and  rain 
That  her  own  eyes  might  see  him  slain 
Beside  the  haystack  in  the  floods  ? 

We  know  from  this  only  that  the  woman  referred  to  is 
a  woman  ot  gentle  birth,  accustomed  to  luxurious  things,  so 
that  it  was  very  difficult  for  her  to  travel  in  rainy  weather 
and  cold,  and  that  she  thought  it  was  a  great  sacrifice  on 
her  part  to  do  so  even  for  a  lover.  If  she  thought  this,  we 
have  a  right  to  suspect  that  she  is  a  wanton — though  we  are 
not  quite  sure  about  it.     The  description  of  her  does  not 


246  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

explain   anything   further   than   the   misery   of  the   situa- 
tion. 

Along  the  dripping  leafless  woods, 
The  stirrup  touching  either  shoe. 
She  rode  astride  as  troopers  do; 
With  kirtle  kilted  to  her  knee, 
To  which  the  mud  splashed  wretchedly; 
And  the  wet  dripp'd  from  every  tree 
Upon  her  head  and  heavy  hair, 
And  on  her  eyelids  broad  and  fair ; 
The  tears  and  rain  ran  down  her  face. 

The  delicate  woman  has  also  the  pain  of  being  lonesome 
on  her  ride ;  for  the  lover,  the  knight,  cannot  ride  beside  her, 
cannot  comfort  her;  he  has  to  ride  far  ahead  in  order  to  see 
what  danger  may  be  in  the  road.  He  is  running  away  with 
her;  perhaps  he  is  a  stranger  in  that  country;  we  shall  pres- 
ently see. 

Suddenly,  nearby  in  the  middle  of  a  flooded  place  the 
enemy  appears,  a  treacherous  knight  who  is  the  avowed 
lover  of  the  woman  and  the  enemy  of  the  man.  She  counts 
the  number  of  spears  with  him — thirty  spears,  and  they 
have  but  ten.  Fighting  is  of  no  use,  the  woman  says,  but 
Robert  (now  we  know  for  the  first  time  the  name  of  her 
companion)  is  not  afraid — believes  that  by  courage  and 
skill  alone  he  can  scatter  the  hostile  force,  and  bring  his 
sweetheart  over  the  river.  She  begs  him  not  to  fight;  her 
selfishness  shows  her  character — it  is  not  for  him  she  is 
afraid,  but  for  herself. 

But,  "O,"  she  said, 

"My  God !     My  God !     I  have  to  tread 
The  long  way  back  without  you;  then 
The  court  at  Paris ;  those  six  men, 
The  gratings  of  the  Chatelet ;  .  .  ." 

And  worse  than  the  gratings  of  the  Chatelet  is  the  stake, 
at  which  she  may  be  burned,  or  the  river  into  which  she  may 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  24j7 

be  thrown,  if  her  lover  is  killed;  there  is  only  one  way  to 
secure  her  own  safety — that  is  to  accept  the  love  of  another 
man  whom  she  hates,  the  wicked  knight  Godmar,  who  is 
now  in  front  of  them  with  thirty  spearsmen.  Evidently 
this  is  no  warrior  woman,  no  daughter  of  soldiers;  she  may 
love,  but  like  Cleopatra  she  is  afraid  of  battle.  Her  lover 
Robert,  like  a  man,  does  not  answer  her  tearful  prayers,  but 
gives  the  command  to  his  men  to  shout  his  war-cry,  and 
boldly  charges  forward.  Then,  triple  sorrow  I  his  men 
stand  still;  they  refuse  to  fight  against  three  times  their 
number,  and  in  another  moment  Robert  is  in  the  power  of 
his  enemy,  disarmed  and  bound.  Thereupon  Godmar  with 
a  wicked  smile  observes  to  the  woman: 

"Now,  Jehane, 
Your  lover's  life  is  on  the  wane 
So  fast,  that,  if  this  very  hour 
You  yield  not  as  my  paramour, 
He  will  not  see  the  rain  leave  off." 

He  does  more  than  threaten  to  kill  her  lover;  he  reminds 
her  of  what  he  can  further  do  to  her.  She  has  said  that  if 
he  takes  her  into  his  castle  by  force,  she  will  kill  either 
herself  or  him  (we  may  doubt  whether  she  would  really  do 
either)  ;  and  he  wants  a  voluntary  submission.  He  talks  to 
her  about  burning  her  alive;  how  would  she  like  that*? 
And  the  ironical  caressing  tone  of  his  language  only  makes 
it  more  implacable. 

"Nay,  if  you  do  not  my  behest; 
O  Jehane !  though  I  love  you  well," 
Said  Godmar,  "would  I  fail  to  tell 
All  that  I  know."     "Foul  lies,"  she  said. 
"Eh !  lies,  my  Jehane  ?  by  God's  head 
At  Paris  folks  would  deem  them  true ! 
Do  you  know,  Jehane,  they  cry  for  you, 
Jehane  the  brown  !     Jehane  the  brown  ! 
Give  us  Jehane  to  burn  or  drown ! — 
Eh — gag  me  Robert  I — sweet  my  friend, 


248  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

This  were  indeed  a  piteous  end 

For  those  long  fingers,  and  long  feet, 

And  long  neck,  and  smooth  shoulders  sweet; 

An  end  that  few  men  would  forget, 

That  saw  it — So,  an  hour  yet; 

Consider,  Jehane,  which  to  take 

Of  life  or  death!" 

She  considers,  or  rather  tries  to  consider,  for  she  is  almost 
too  weary  to  speak,  and  very  quickly  falls  asleep  in  the  rain 
on  the  wet  hay.  An  hour  passes.  When  she  is  awakened, 
she  only  sighs  like  a  tired  child,  and  answers,  "I  will  not." 
Perhaps  she  could  not  believe  that  her  enemy  and  lover 
would  do  as  he  had  threatened;  and  in  spite  of  the  risk  of 
further  angering  him,  she  approaches  the  prisoner  and  tries 
to  kiss  him  farewell.     Immediately, 

With   a   start 
Up  Godmar  rose,  thrust  them  apart; 
From  Robert's  throat  he  loosed  the  bands 
Of  silk  and  mail ;  with  empty  hands 
Held  out,  she  stood  and  gazed,  and  saw. 
The  long  bright  blade  without  a  flaw 
Glide  out  from  Godmar's  sheath,  his  hand 
In  Robert's  hair ;  she  saw  him  bend 
Back  Robert's  head ;  she  saw  him  send 
The  thin  steel  down ;  the  blow  told  well, 
Right  backward  the  knight  Robert  fell. 
And  moaned  as  dogs  do,  being  half  dead, 
Unwittingly,  as  I  deem :  so  then 
Godmar  turn'd  grinning  to  his  men. 
Who  ran,  some  five  or  six,  and  beat 
His  head  to  pieces  at  her  feet. 

The  knight  groans  involuntarily,  in  the  death  struggle 
only,  and  probably  the  sound  of  his  pain  pleases  Godmar, 
but  in  order  to  make  sure  that  he  cannot  recover  again,  he 
makes  a  sign  to  his  followers  to  finish  the  work  of  murder; 
so  they  beat  in  his  skull — an  ugly  thing  for  a  woman  to  see 
done.     There  were  rough-hearted  men  in  those  days  who 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  249 

could  see  a  woman  burned  alive  and  laugh  at  her  suffering. 
You  have  read,  I  think,  the  terrible  story  about  Black  Fulk, 
who  made  a  great  holiday  on  the  occasion  of  burning  his 
young  wife  alive,  and  took  his  friends  to  see  the  show,  him- 
self putting  on  his  best  holiday  attire.  This  Godmar  seems 
to  be  nearly  as  harsh  a  brute,  judging  from  what  he  next 
has  to  say. 

Then  Godmar  turn'd  again  and  said: 
"So,  Jehane,  the  first  fitte  is  read ! 
Take  note,  my  lady,  that  your  way 
Lies  backward  to  the  Chatelet !" 
She  shook  her  head  and  gazed  awhile 
At  her  cold  hands  with  rueful  smile. 
As  though  this  thing  had  made  her  mad. 

This  was  the  parting  that  they  had 
Beside  the  haystack  in  the  floods. 

Notice  the  brutal  use  of  the  word  "iitte"  (often  spelled 
fytte).  This  was  an  old  name  for  the  divisions  of  a  long 
poem,  romance,  or  epic.  Later  the  Italian  term  "canto" 
was  substituted  for  it.  Godmar  refers  to  the  woman's  love 
as  her  romance,  her  poem :  "Now  the  first  canto  of  our  love- 
romance  has  been  read — only  the  first,  remember  I"  The 
second  fitte  will  be  perhaps  the  burning  of  the  woman  when 
she  is  brought  back  to  the  castle  prison  from  which  she  fled. 
It  all  depends  upon  circumstances.  If  she  has  really  be- 
come mad,  she  may  escape.  The  poem  ends  here,  leaving 
us  in  doubt  about  the  rest.  We  can  only  imagine  the  termi- 
nation. I  think  that  she  has  not  really  become  mad,  that 
she  is  too  selfish  and  weak  to  bear  or  even  to  feel  the  real 
emotional  shock  of  the  thing;  and  that  when  they  are  half 
way  to  the  prison  she  is  likely  to  yield  to  Godmar's  will. 
If  she  does  so,  he  will  probably  keep  her  in  his  castle  until 
he  tires  of  her,  and  finds  it  expedient  to  end  her  existence 
with  as  little  scruple  as  he  showed  in  killing  Robert.  But, 
as  an  actual  fact,  it  is  difficult  to  be  sure  of  anything,  be- 


250  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

cause  we  know  neither  the  beginning  nor  the  end  of  the 
affair.  We  have  only  a  glimpse  of  the  passion,  suffering, 
selfishness,  cruelty — then  utter  darkness.  And  this  method 
of  merely  glimpsing  the  story  causes  it  to  leave  a  profound 
impression  upon  the  imagination.  Please  do  not  forget 
this,  because  it  is  the  most  important  art  in  any  kind  of 
narrative  literature,  whether  of  poetry  or  of  prose. 

A  second  example  of  the  same  device  is  furnished  by 
another  terrible  poem  called  "The  Judgment  of  God." 
The  Judgment  of  God  is  an  old  name  for  trial  by  single 
combat.  It  was  a  superstitious  law,  a  foolish  and  wicked 
law,  but  it  served  a  purpose  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  it  af- 
forded an  opportunity  for  many  noble  and  courageous 
deeds.  Browning  took  up  this  subject  in  his  stirring  poem 
of  "Count  Gismond."  The  law  was  this:  when  one  knight 
was  accused  by  another  of  some  evil,  cruel,  or  treacherous 
act,  he  was  allowed  to  challenge  the  man  who  brought  the 
charge  against  him  to  fight  to  the  death — a  Voutrance^  as 
the  old  term  expressed  it.  The  combat  took  place  in  the 
presence  of  the  lord  or  king  and  before  a  great  assembly, 
according  to  fixed  rules.  If  the  man  who  brought  the 
charge  lost  the  fight,  then  it  was  thought  that  he  had  proved 
himself  a  liar.  If  the  person  accused  won  the  battle,  then 
he  was  declared  to  be  innocent.  For  it  was  thought  that 
God  would  protect  the  truth  in  such  cases;  and  therefore 
these  combats  were  called  the  "judgment  of  God."  Never- 
theless you  will  perceive  that  a  very  skilful  knight  might 
be  able  to  kill  a  great  number  of  accusers,  and  lawfully 
"prove"  himself  innocent  of  a  hundred  crimes.  That  was 
a  great  defect  of  the  system. 

The  "Judgment  of  God"  is  a  monologue,  quite  as  good 
in  its  way  as  many  of  the  short  monologues  of  Browning. 
It  is  the  knight  against  whom  accusation  has  been  brought 
that  tells  us  the  feelings  and  impressions  of  the  moment 
that  he  enters  the  lists  to  fight.  In  this  case  we  are  more 
moved  to  sympathy  than  in  the  former  stories,  because  we 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  251 

know  thrt  the  man,  whether  otherwise  bad  or  good,  has 
saved  a  woman  from  the  stake,  and  killed  the  lords  who 
were  about  to  burn  her.  So  we  are  inclined  to  think  of  him 
as  a  hero.  We  have  just  one  sudden  vision  of  a  man's 
mind,  as  he  stands  in  the  face  of  death,  with  no  sympathy 
about  him  except  that  of  his  old  father,  who  comes  to  give 
him  advice  about  fighting,  because  he  is  to  be  matched 
against  a  very  skilful  knight. 

"Swerve  to  the  left,  son  Roger,"  he  said, 

"When  you  catch  his  eyes  through  the  helmet-slit, 

Swerve  to  the  left,  then  out  at  his  head, 
And  the  Lord  God  give  you  joy  of  it !" 

The  old  man  knows  how  to  fight,  has  probably  won  many 
a  battle,  and  he  has  observed  the  way  that  the  light  is  fall- 
ing. So  he  tells  his  son,  "When  you  begin  to  fight,  don't 
turn  to  the  right — turn  to  the  left;  then  you  will  be  able  to 
see  his  eyes  through  the  helmet,  and  immediately  that  you 
see  them,  strike  straight  for  his  head,  and  may  God  help 
you  to  kill  him."  He  has  just  heard  these  words  from  his 
father  when  the  prologue  begins. 

The  blue  owls  on  my  father's  hood 

Were  a  little  dimm'd,  as  I  turned  away; 

This  giving  up  of  blood  for  blood 
Will  finish  here  somehow  to-day. 

So  when  I  walked  from  out  the  tent, 

Their  howling  almost  blinded  me ; 
Yet  for  all  that  I  was  not  bent 

By  any  shame.     Hard  by,  the  sea 

Made  a  noise  like  the  aspens  where 
We  did  that  wrong,  but  now  the  place 

Is  very  pleasant,  and  the  air 
Blows  cool  on  any  passer's  face. 

And  all  the  throng  is  gather'd  now 
Into  the  circle  of  these  lists — 


252  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

Yea,  howl  out,  butchers !  tell  me  how 
His  hands  were  cut  off  at  the  wrists ; 

And  how  Lord  Roger  bore  his  face 
A  league  above  his  spear  point,  high 

Above  the  owls,  to  that  strong  place 
Among  the  waters — yea,  yea,  cry ! 

The  owls  on  the  crest  are  the  emblem  of  the  family. 
The  knight  has  been  waiting  in  his  tent  according  to  rulej 
until  the  signal  is  given;  and  his  father  and  his  retainers 
probably  helped  to  arm  him  there.  He  feels  no  emotion 
except  at  the  moment  of  bidding  his  father  good-bye,  and 
then  he  knows  that  there  are  tears  in  his  own  eyes,  because 
the  owl  crest  on  his  father's  hood  suddenly  appears  dim. 
Then,  as  the  signal  is  given,  he  walks  out  of  the  tent  into 
the  lists,  only  to  hear  a  roar  of  hatred  and  abuse  go  up 
from  all  the  circles  of  seats.  The  friends  of  the  dead  are 
evidently  in  great  force,  and  he  has  no  friend  except  his 
father  and  his  retainers.  And  they  shout  at  him,  his  ene- 
mies, telling  him  what  he  has  done — how  he  cut  off  the 
hands  of  the  knight  and  cut  off  his  head  and  carried  it  upon 
the  top  of  a  spear  for  three  miles,  carried  it  above  his  own 
banner  to  his  own  castle.  This  was  indeed  considered  an 
unknightly  thing  in  those  days,  for  such  was  the  treat- 
ment given  to  common  people  in  war,  not  to  knights  or  men 
of  rank. 

Then  he  sees  the  man  with  whom  he  must  fight,  waiting 
for  him,  all  in  armour,  with  white  linen  over  his  arm,  to 
indicate  that  he  is  fighting  for  the  cause  of  truth.  At 
this  Roger  can  very  well  laugh;  and  he  remarks  that  the 
face  of  the  champion's  lady  looks  even  whiter  than  the 
linen  upon  her  lord's  arm.  She  has  reason,  perhaps,  to  be 
afraid  for  him.  And  though  he  has  not  much  time  for 
thinking,  Roger  remembers  his  own  beloved,  waiting  for 
him,  remembers  even  how  he  first  met  her.  Addressing  her 
in  thought,  he  says: 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  253 

And  these  say :     "No  more  now  my  knight, 

Or  God's  knight  any  longer" — you 
Being  than  they  so  much  more  white, 

So  much  more  pure  and  good  and  true, 

Will  cling  to  me  forever — there, 

Is  not  that  wrong  turn'd  right  at  last 
Through  all  these  years,  and  I  wash'd  clean? 

Say,  yea,  EUayne ;  the  time  is  past, 

Since  on  that  Christmas-day  last  year 

Up  to  your  feet  the  tire  crept ; 
And  the  smoke  through  the  brown  leaves  sere 

Blinded  your  dear  eyes  that  you  wept ; 

Was  it  not  I  that  caught  you  then 

And  kiss'd  you  on  the  saddle-bow  ? 
Did  not  the  blue  owl  mark  the  men 

Whose  spears  stood  like  the  corn  a-row? 

Evidently  she  has  reason  to  love  him  and  his  house;  did 
he  not  save  her  from  the  fire*? — did  he  not  come  with  his 
spearmen  and  crush  her  enemies,  and  take  her  away  upon 
his  horse  to  safety"?  And  was  not  that  enough  to  atone 
for  whatever  other  wrong  he  might  have  done'?  But  he 
has  only  a  moment  in  which  to  think  all  this,  for  the  trumpet 
is  about  to  sound  for  the  fight,  and  there  are  other  things 
to  think  about.  One  of  these  is  that  his  antagonist  is  a 
very  good  man,  difficult  to  overcome;  the  other  is  that 
there  is  danger  for  him  even  if  he  conquers,  because  there 
are  so  many  present  who  hate  him. 

This  Oliver  is  a  right  good  knight, 

And  needs  must  beat  me,  as  I  fear. 
Unless  I  catch  him  in  the  fight. 

My  father's  crafty  way — John,  here! 

Bring  up  the  men  from  the  south  gate, 

To  help  me  if  I  fall  or  win, 
For  even  if  I  beat,  their  hate 

Will  grow  to  more  than  this  mere  grin. 


254  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

If  the  reader  could  imagine  the  result  of  the  combat, 
the  real  effect  of  the  poem  in  its  present  form  would  be 
lost.  No  man  can  imagine  it.  The  challenged  knight  ac- 
knowledges his  antagonist  to  be  a  better  man — indeed,  he 
says  that  he  can  only  hope  to  conquer  him  by  the  cunning 
trick  taught  him  by  his  old  father.  But  the  really  danger- 
ous man  never  underrates  the  capacity  of  an  enemy;  and  we 
may  suspect  that  the  forces  are  at  least  even.  So,  as  I  have 
said,  no  man  can  guess  the  result  of  the  battle,  and  the 
reader  is  forced  to  keep  wondering  what  happened.  He 
will  always  wonder,  but  he  will  never  be  able  to  feel  con- 
vinced. And  to  leave  the  mind  of  the  reader  thus  inter- 
ested and  unsatisfied  is  a  great  stroke  of  literary  art.  The 
same  book  contains  a  number  of  mediaeval  pieces  of  the 
same  sort,  showing  how  very  unimportant  it  is  whether  you 
begin  a  story  in  the  middle  or  whether  you  leave  it  without 
an  end.  The  greatest  French  story-tellers  of  modern 
times  have  made  almost  popular  the  form  of  art  in  fic- 
tion to  which  I  refer.  Take,  for  example,  the  late  Guy  de 
Maupassant,  many  of  whose  short  stories  have,  I  am  told, 
been  translated  into  Japanese.  No  one  modern  prose 
writer  ever  succeeded  better  in  telling  a  story  without  any 
beginning  or  without  any  end.  Positively  no  beginning 
and  no  end  is  necessary,  in  many  cases;  and  remember,  this 
method  of  representing  only  the  middle  of  things  is  exactly 
true  to  life.  We  never  see  or  hear  of  the  whole  of  any 
incident  that  happens  under  our  eyes.  We  see  only  a  fact, 
without  knowing  what  caused  it  to  come  about,  and  with- 
out knowing  what  will  be  the  consequences  of  it.  Out- 
side of  our  own  homes  we  do  not  see  much  of  other  people's 
lives,  and  never  the  whole  of  any  one's  life. 

Among  other  pieces  in  the  book  I  should  call  your  at- 
tention to  "The  Little  Tower,"  "Sir  Peter  Harpdon's  End," 
"The  Wind,"  "The  Eve  of  Crecy,"  "In  Prison,"  and  "The 
Blue  Closet."  They  are  very  different  in  idea,  but  I  think 
that  you  will  find  them  all  extremely  original.     "The  Little 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  255 

Tower"  has  no  beginning  and  no  end.  It  only  describes 
faithfully  the  feelings  of  a  knight  riding  over  an  inundated 
country,  swimming  his  horse  along  the  side  of  bridges  un- 
der water,  and  thinking  to  himself  of  the  joy  of  capturing 
an  enemy's  castle  by  surprise,  killing  the  lord  and  burning 
the  lady.  It  is  brutal  in  a  certain  way,  but  supremely 
natural.  The  story  of  "Sir  Peter  Harpdon's  End"  is  not 
a  monologue;  it  is  a  very  dramatic  narrative  in  which  a 
number  of  men  of  different  character  play  their  parts.  It 
has  no  beginning,  but  the  end  is  plainly  suggested — and 
this  shows  the  tender  side  of  human  nature  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  Sir  Peter  is  brave,  kindl}^,  and  true.  Therefore, 
when  he  has  his  enemy  at  his  mercy,  instead  of  killing  him, 
he  only  cuts  off  his  ears.  As  a  consequence  he  is  after- 
wards himself  destroyed;  the  obvious  moral  of  the  narra- 
tive is  that  a  merciful  heart  was  a  dangerous  possession  in 
those  times.  The  good  men  were  easily  trapped  by  play- 
ing upon  their  feelings  of  pity  or  sympathy.  "The 
Wind"  represents  the  madness  of  a  very  old  knight,  alone 
in  his  castle.  The  sound  of  the  wind  makes  him  think  of 
the  voices  of  the  dead  whom  he  knew,  and  brings  him 
back  to  the  memories  of  his  youth,  and  of  a  woman  that  he 
loved.  And  at  last  the  ghosts  of  forgotten  friends  enter 
and  glide  about  him.  This  has  no  beginning  and  no  end, 
and  it  remains  very  strongly  impressed  upon  the  memory. 
We  should  like  to  know  the  story  of  that  woman,  the  story 
of  the  madness  of  the  old  man,  but  we  shall  never  know. 
"The  Eve  of  Crecy"  represents  the  state  of  mind  of  a 
young  French  knight  just  before  the  fatal  battle,  when 
the  flower  of  the  French  chivalry  was  destroyed  by  a  mere 
handful  of  English  soldiers  driven  to  bay.  You  may  re- 
member that  before  the  battle  the  English  prepared  them- 
selves very  thoroughly  and  made  fervent  prayers  to  heaven 
for  success.  But  the  French  spent  the  night  in  carousing 
and  jesting,  never  dreaming  that  they  could  lose  the  fight. 
Here  Morris  shows  us  one  of  the  young  noblemen  think- 


256  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

ing  only  about  his  sweetheart,  some  girl  of  noble  rank  whom 
he  hopes  to  win.  He  is  going  to  do  great  deeds  the  next 
day,  then  the  king  will  smile  upon  him,  and  he  will  not  be 
afraid  to  ask  the  father  of  that  girl  to  permit  him  to  be- 
come his  son-in-law.  And  so  the  poem  abruptly  breaks 
off.  The  end  here  we  can  guess — a  corpse  riddled  with 
English  arrows,  and  trampled  under  the  feet  of  thousands 
of  horses.  "In  Prison,"  among  the  others,  represents  the 
emotions  of  a  knight  confined  in  a  mediseval  dungeon. 
"The  Blue  Closet"  is  a  fantasy,  a  wild  mediaeval  fairy  tale, 
put  into  a  dramatic  form  that  reminds  one  singularly  of 
the  later  work  of  Maeterlinck.  It  is,  however,  a  note- 
worthy composition  as  poetry,  and  attained  immediate  popu- 
larity among  all  those  who  looked  for  beauties  of  colour 
and  sound  rather  than  reflections  of  life. 

Those  notes  will  give  you  an  idea  of  the  variety  of  the 
book.  And  the  mediseval  pieces  are  worth  thinking  about, 
if  any  of  you  should  care  to  attempt  authorship  in  a  simi- 
lar direction,  whether  in  poetry  or  in  prose.  There  was 
a  period  in  Japanese  feudalism,  a  period  of  constant  civil 
wars  and  baronial  quarrels,  which  would  have  produced 
a  very  similar  condition  of  things  to  that  described  in  cer- 
tain of  these  poems,  and  I  even  think  that  more  startling 
effects  could  be  produced  by  a  judicious  handling  of  Jap- 
anese themes  in  the  same  way,  that  is,  without  attempting 
any  beginning  or  suggesting  any  end. 

But  observe  that  I  am  not  holding  up  these  poems  to  you 
as  great  masterpieces  of  verse.  I  mean  only  that  they  sug- 
gest how  great  masterpieces  might  be  made.  And  please 
to  note  especially  one  phase  of  the  art  of  them,  its  psycho- 
logical quality.  Morris  was  not  so  great  a  psychologist  as 
Browning,  who  came  nearest  to  Shakespeare  in  this  respect 
of  all  English  poets.  But  Morris  has  considerable  ability 
in  this  way,  and  the  most  striking  effects  in  his  short  poems 
are  produced  by  making  us  understand  the  feelings  of  per- 
sons in  particular  moments  of  pain  or  terror  or  heroic  ef- 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  257 

fort.  For  example,  how  natural  and  horrible  is  the  solilo- 
quy of  Guinevere  in  the  long  poem  with  which  the  book 
opens.  You  know  that  Tennyson  did  not  follow  the 
original  account  of  Malory  in  regard  to  the  more  cruel 
episodes  of  the  old  story.  He  felt  repelled  by  such  an  inci- 
dent as  the  preparations  for  burning  the  queen  alive.  In 
the  real  story  she  is  about  to  be  burned  when  Lancelot 
comes  and  saves  her,  not  without  killing  half  the  knights 
present  and  some  of  his  own  relations  into  the  bargain. 
But  Morris  saw  in  this  episode  an  opportunity  for  psycho- 
logical work,  and  took  it,  just  as  Browning  might  have  done. 
He  makes  the  queen  express  her  thought : 

...  "I  know 
I  wondered  how  the  fire,  while  I  should  stand, 
And  burn,  against  the  heat,  would  quiver  so, 
Yards  above  my  head." 

This  Startles,  because  it  is  true.  The  quotations  which 
I  gave  you  from  "The  Haystack  in  the  Floods"  contain  sev- 
eral passages  of  an  equally  impressive  sort.  We  can  best 
revive  the  past  in  literature  not  by  trying  to  describe  the 
details  of  custom  and  of  costume  then  prevalent,  but  by 
trying  to  express  faithfully  the  feelings  of  people  who  lived 
long  ago.  And  this  can  be  managed  most  effectively  either 
by  monologue  or  dialogue. 

The  only  other  collection  of  short  poems  written  by 
Morris  is  now  compressed  into  a  companion  volume  en- 
titled "Poems  by  the  Way."  All  of  it  is  later  work,  but 
it  is  not  more  successful  than  the  youthful  productions 
which  we  have  been  considering.  Nevertheless  it  excels  in 
greater  variety.  You  have  here  dramatic  pieces  of  sev- 
eral kinds,  ballads  and  translations  of  ballads,  fairy  tales 
and  translations  of  fairy  tales,  mediaeval  and  Norse  stories, 
and  strangely  mixed  with  these  a  number  of  socialist  poems 
— for  Morris  believed  in  the  theories  of  socialism,  in  the 
possibility  of  an  ideal  communism. 


258  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

The  bulk  of  the  pieces  in  the  volume,  however,  are 
Scandinavian,  and  the  general  tone  of  the  book  is  North- 
ern. Morris  was  a  tremendous  worker  in  the  interest  of 
Scandinavian  literature.  He  loved  the  medievalism  of  the 
pagan  Norse  even  more  than  the  corresponding  period  of 
the  Christian  and  chivalrous  South.  He  helped  the  work 
of  those  great  Oxford  professors  who  brought  out  the  Corpus 
Poeticum  Bo  real  e,  translating  in  conjunction  with  one  of 
them  several  ancient  Sagas.  And  as  a  poet  he  did  a  great 
deal  to  quicken  English  interest  in  Norse  literature,  as  we 
shall  see  later  on.  In  this  book  we  have  only  short  pieces, 
but  they  are  good,  and  a  number  of  them  have  the  value 
of  almost  literal  translations.  As  for  the  style,  a  good  ex- 
ample is  furnished  by  the  story  of  the  killing  of  the  Hall- 
gerd  (or  Hallgerda)  by  Hallbiorn  the  Strong.  The  story 
is  taken  from  an  old  Icelandic  history,  and  is  undoubtedly 
true.  Hallbiorn  wedded  a  daughter  of  a  man  called  Odd, 
on  account  of  his  odd  character.  She  was  very  beautiful. 
Her  father  insisted  that  Hallbiorn  should  spend  the  whole 
next  season,  winter,  with  him,  and  said  that  he  might  take 
his  bride  away  in  the  spring  for  the  summer.  During  the 
winter  Hallgerda  had  a  secret  intrigue  with  a  blood  rela- 
tion called  Sncebiorn.  The  husband  did  not  know,  he  only 
felt  a  little  suspicious  at  times.  When  the  summer  came, 
and  he  asked  Hallgerda  to  go  with  him  to  the  house  which 
he  had  built  for  her,  she  did  not  answer.  He  asked  her 
twice,  still  she  did  not  answer.  The  third  time  she  refused. 
Then  he  killed  her.  Then  Snabiorn,  her  lover,  attacked 
him,  and  after  a  terrible  fight  in  which  eight  or  nine  men 
were  killed,  Hallbiorn  was  cut  down.  Snaebiorn  then  left 
the  country  vowing  that  he  would  never  speak  to  man 
again,  and  settled  in  Greenland,  where  he  died.  The  inci- 
dents are  not  wonderful,  but  the  simple  and  terrible  way 
in  which  they  are  told  by  the  Icelandic  chronicle  makes 
them  appeal  greatly  to  the  imagination.     And  Morris  did 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  259 

justice  to  the  style  of  the  old  Landnamabok,  as  it  is  called. 
The  following  lines  relate  to  the  tragedy  only : 

.  .  .  But  Hallbiorn  into  the  bower  is  gone 

And  there  sat  Hallgerd  all  alone. 

She  was  not  dight  to  go  nor  ride, 

She  had  no  joy  of  the  summer-tide, 

Silent  she  sat  and  combed  her  hair. 

That  fell  all  round  about  her  there. 

The  slant  beam  lay  upon  her  head 

And  gilt  her  golden  locks  to  red. 

He  gazed  at  her  with  hungry  eyes 

And  fluttering  did  his  heart  arise. 

"Full  hot,"  he  said,  "is  the  sun  to-day, 

And  the  snow  is  gone  from  the  mountain-way. 

The  king-cup  grows  above  the  grass, 

And  through  the  wood  do  the  thrushes  pass." 

Of  all  his  words  she  hearkened  none 

But  combed  her  hair  amidst  the  sun. 

"The  laden  beasts  stand  in  the  garth. 

And  their  heads  are  turned  to  Helliskarth." 

The  sun  was  falling  on  her  knee, 

And  she  combed  her  gold  hair  silently. 

"To-morrow  great  will  be  the  cheer 

At  the  Brothers'  Tongue  by  Whitewater." 

From  her  folded  lap  the  sunbeam  slid ; 

She  combed  her  hair,  and  the  word  she  hid. 

"Come,  love;  is  the  way  so  long  and  drear 

From  Whitewater  to  Whitewater?" 

The  sunbeam  lay  upon  the  floor ; 

She  combed  her  hair  and  spake  no  more. 

He  drew  her  by  the  lily  hand : 

"I  love  thee  better  than  all  the  land." 

He  drew  her  by  the  shoulders  sweet, 

"My  threshold  is  but  for  thy  feet." 

He  drew  her  by  the  yellow  hair, 

"Oh,  why  wert  thou  so  deadly  fair? 

Oh,  am  I  wedded  to  death?"  he  cried, 

"Is  the  Dead-strand  come  to  Whitewater  side?" 

In  order  to  know  how  terrible  all  this  is,  we  must  under- 


260  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

stand  the  character  of  the  Norse  woman.  Like  the  will 
of  the  man,  her  will  is  iron;  she  cannot  be  broken,  she  can- 
not be  made  to  bend,  except  by  love,  and  when  she  refuses 
to  bend  there  is  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  kill  her.  All 
the  facts  stated  here  in  rhymed  verse  are  even  more  terri- 
ble and  more  simple  in  the  prose  chronicle.  Throughout 
Norse  history  we  repeatedly  hear  of  women  being  killed 
under  like  circumstances.  These  ferocious  men  would  not 
beat  or  abuse  their  women;  that  would  have  been  no  use. 
But  they  insisted  upon  being  obeyed;  to  refuse  obedience 
was  to  court  death.  In  the  present  true  story,  however, 
the  refusal  to  obey  means  much  more  than  to  court  death; 
it  means  a  bold  confession  by  the  bride  that  she  has  loved 
and  still  loves  another  man  than  her  husband,  and  that  is 
the  reason  of  his  sudden  and  terrible  question,  "Oh,  am  I 
wedded  to  death?  Is  the  Dead-strand  come  to  this  place*?" 
The  Dead-strand  or  Corpse-strand  was,  in  Norse  mythology, 
the  name  of  a  part  of  Hel,  the  region  of  the  dead,  the 
Hades  of  old  Norse,  so  his  question  really  means,  "Have 
the  evil  dead  come  here  for  us  both?"  for  good  men  and 
women  did  not  go  to  the  Dead-strand.  Now  hear  her 
answer.  When  he  speaks  at  last,  she  sings  in  his  face  her 
secret  lover's  favourite  song,  which  is  just  the  Jame  thing 
as  to  say,  "I  am  glad  to  be  killed  for  my  lover's  sake," 
And  to  kill  a  Norse  woman  meant,  of  course,  death  for  the 
man  who  slew  her,  for  her  kindred  were  bound  to  avenge 
her.     So  she  is  defying  him  in  every  way. 

The  sun  was  fading  from  the  room, 

But  her  eyes  were  bright  in  the  change  and  the  gloom, 

"Sharp  Sword,"  she  sang, — "and  death  is  sure, 

But  over  all  doth  love  endure." 

She  stood  up  shining  in  her  place 

And  laughed  beneath  his  deadly  face. 

Instead  of  the  sunbeam  gleamed  a  brand,    . 

The  hilts  were  hard  in  Hallbiorn's  hand. 

The  last  line  contains  a  phrase  from  old  Northern  war 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  261 

poetry.  To  say  that  the  hilt  of  a  man's  sword  was  hard 
in  his  hand,  signifies  that  he  was  a  terrible  swordsman,  ac- 
customed to  mighty  blows.  But  Morris  here  makes  a  little 
departure  from  the  original  chronicle.  He  makes  Hallbiorn 
pass  his  sword  through  the  woman's  body.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  he  did  nothing  of  the  kind;  he  simply  cut  her  head 
off  at  a  single  blow.  Very  dramatic,  however,  is  his  telling 
of  the  subsequent  flight  of  Hallbiorn,  and  the  pursuit  by 
Snaebiorn.  Hallbiorn's  men  are  surprised  at  the  fact  that 
he  does  not  hold  his  ground,  for  they  know  nothing  of  what 
happened  in  the  house,  and  one  of  them  says,  "Where  shall 
we  sleep  to-night?"  Hallbiorn  answers  grimly,  "Under 
the  ground."  Then  his  retainers  know  for  the  first  time 
that  they  are  going  to  be  attacked.  The  attacking  party 
consists  of  twelve  men.  Hallbiorn's  retainers  urge  their 
master  to  hasten  forward;  it  is  still  possible,  they  think, 
to  escape.  But  he  stops  his  horse  and  leaps  down,  ex- 
claiming: 

"Why  should  the  supper  of  Odin  wait? 
Weary  and  chased  I  will  not  come 
To  the  table  of  my  father's  home." 

That  is  a  fine  expression  about  the  supper  of  Odin,  re- 
ferring to  the  hope  of  every  brave  man  to  enter,  at  his 
death,  into  Valhalla,  the  hall  of  Odin,  and  to  sup  with  the 
gods.  And  to  enter  there  one  had  to  be  killed  in  battle. 
So  you  can  see  the  fierce  humour  of  Hallbiorn's  remark  that 
he  does  not  want  to  come  late  to  the  supper  of  the  gods, 
and  to  keep  the  feast  waiting.  Snsebiorn  does  not  speak'. 
Hallbiorn  only  laughs.  He  kills  five  men;  then  one  of 
his  feet  is  cut  off,  but  he  rushes  forward  upon  the  bleeding 
stump,  and  kills  two  more  before  he  is  overpowered.  It 
was  a  terribly  savage  world,  the  old  Norse  world;  but  we 
like  to  read  about  it,  and  we  cannot  help  loving  the  splendid 
courage  of  the  men  and  women  who  passed  their  lives  among 
such  tragedies,  fearing  nothing  but  loss  of  honour. 


262  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

Several  other  Norse  subjects  have  been  treated  by  Morris 
with  equal  success;  and  one  is  remarkable  for  the  strange 
charm  of  a  refrain  used  in  it,  a  refrain  from  the  Norse. 
It  is  called  "The  King  of  Denmark's  Sons,"  and  it  is  the 
story  of  a  fratricide.  King  Gorm  of  Denmark  had  two 
sons,  Knut  and  Harald: 

Fair  was  Knut  of  face  and  limb, 

As  the  breast  of  the  Queen  that  suckled  him; 

But  Harald  was  hot  of  hand  and  heart 

As  lips  of  lovers  ere  they  part. 

In  history  Knut  was  called  the  beloved.  All  men  loved 
him,  he  was  the  heir;  and  the  old  king  loved  him  so  much 
that  he  one  day  said,  "If  any  one,  man  or  woman,  ever  tells 
me  that  my  son  Knut  is  dead,  that  person  has  spoken  the 
word  which  sends  him  or  her  to  Hel."  But  this  great 
love  only  made  the  younger  brother  jealous.  Harald  was 
a  Viking;  he  voyaged  southward  and  eastward,  ravaging 
coasts  in  the  Mediterranean  or  desolating  provinces  nearer 
home.  His  name  was  a  terror  in  England  at  one  time. 
But  his  father  never  praised  him  as  he  praised  his  brother. 
So  one  day  at  sea  he  attacked  his  brother,  overcame  all  re- 
sistance, and  killed  him.  Then  he  went  home  and  told 
his  mother  what  had  been  done.  But  who  dare  tell  the 
King?  The  mother  imagined  a  plan.  During  the  night 
she  decked  the  palace  hall  all  in  black,  taking  away  every 
ornament.  So  in  the  morning,  when  the  King  entered  the 
hall,  he  asked,  "Who  has  dared  to  do  this*?"  the  Queen 
answered,  "We,  the  women  of  the  palace  have  done  it." 
"Then,"  said  the  King,  "tell  me  that  my  son  Knut  is  dead  I" 
"You  yourself  have  said  the  word,"  the  Queen  made  an- 
swer. And  therewith  the  old  king  died  as  he  sat  in  his 
chair;  and  the  wicked  son  became  king.  This  is  the  simple 
history,  and  Morris  has  not  departed  from  historic  truth 
in  his  version  of  it.     The  refrain  excellently  suits  the  ballad 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  263 

measure  chosen;  from  the  very  first  stanza,  the  tone  of  it 
suggests  all  the  tragedy  that  is  going  to  follow. 

In  Denmark  gone  is  many  a  year, 
So  fair  upriseth  the  rim  of  the  sun. 
Two  sons  of  Gorm  the  King  there  were, 
So  grey  is  the  sea  when  the  day  is  done. 

Sunrise  symbolises  happiness,  joy;  grey  is  the  colour  of 
melancholy;  and  nothing  is  so  lonesome,  so  sad  looking, 
as  the  waste  of  the  sea  when  it  turns  to  grey  in  the  twi- 
light. The  refrain  reminds  one  of  a  famous  line  by  an 
American  poet,  Bryant,  who  certainly  never  saw  this  bal- 
lad: 

Old  ocean's  grey  and  melancholy  waste. 

Besides  the  above  Norse  subjects,  I  might  call  your  at- 
tention to  the  following  titles:  "The  Folk-Mote  by  the 
River,"  "Knight  Aagen  and  Maiden  Else,"  "Hafbur  and 
Signy,"  "The  Raven  and  the  King's  Daughter."  All  these 
are  well  worth  reading.  So  are  the  purely  fairy  tales. 
Northern  fairy  tales  had  a  great  charm  for  Morris.  He 
chose  them  as  subjects,  perhaps  because  he  saw  a  way  of 
putting  into  them  a  new  charm,  a  charm  not  suited  for  child 
readers,  but  attractive  to  the  adult  public.  I  suppose  you 
know  that  fairy  tales,  as  written  for  children,  are  written  so 
as  to  appeal  chiefly  to  the  imagination,  and  to  those  simple 
emotions  of  which  children  are  capable.  But  originally 
such  stories  were  told  for  the  amusement  of  grown  up  peo- 
ple, and  a  great  deal  of  love  sentiment  figures  in  some  of 
them.  Morris  remembering  this,  took  several  charming 
stories  and  infused  them  with  a  new  artistic  sensuousness, 
making  love  the  motive  and  the  principal  sentiment.  In 
the  other  volume  of  which  I  spoke,  the  old  story  of  "Rapun- 
zel"  is  treated  in  this  way;  in  the  volume  now  under  con- 
sideration we  have  the  story  "Goldilocks  and  Goldilocks." 


264.  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

It  is  the  wildest,  the  most  impossible  kind  of  fairy  tale  (so, 
for  that  matter,  is  Coleridge's  "Christabel"),  but  he  gave  it 
a  very  human  charm  by  putting  delightful  little  bits  of 
human  nature  into  it — such  as  the  passage  where  the  en- 
chanted maiden,  who  never  saw  a  man  before,  meets  the 
handsome  knight  for  the  first  time: 

But  the  very  first  step  he  made  from  the  place 
He  met  a  maiden  face  to  face. 

Face  to  face,  and  so  close  was  she, 
That  their  lips  met  soft  and  lovingly. 

Sweet-mouthed  she  was,  and  fair  he  wist; 
And  again  in  the  darksome  wood  they  kissed. 

Then  first  in  the  wood  her  voice  he  heard, 
As  sweet  as  the  song  of  the  summer  bird. 

"O  thou  fair  man  with  the  golden  head, 
What  is  the  name  of  thee?"  she  said. 

"My  name  is  Goldilocks,"  said  he, 

"O  sweet-breathed,  what  is  the  name  of  thee?" 

"O  Goldilocks  the  Swain,"  she  said, 
"My  name  is  Goldilocks  the  Maid." 

He  spake,  "Love  me  as  I  thee. 
And  Goldilocks  one  flesh  shall  be." 

She  said,  "Fair  man,  I  wot  not  how 
Thou  lovest,  but  I  love  thee  now." 

And  they  go  on  talking  together,  like  two  children,  in 
their  eighteenth  century  English — she  full  of  wonder  at 
the  beauty  of  the  stranger  of  another  sex,  he  full  of  loving 
pity  for  her  supreme  innocence.  And  then  all  kinds  of 
magical  dangers  and  troubles  come  to  separate  them,  but 
love  conquers  all.     The  story  is  known  by  many  children, 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  265 

but  not  as  Morris  tells  it.  His  principal  purpose  is  to  pic- 
ture a  character  of  perfect  innocence  and  perfect  trust;  and 
he  does  this  so  delightfully  that  we  cease  to  care  whether 
the  tale  is  a  fairy  one  or  not.  It  stirs  most  agreeably  some- 
thing which  is  true  in  everybody's  heart;  we  love  what  is 
beautiful  in  the  character  of  the  child  or  the  supremely 
innocent  young  girl. 

As  a  single  work  in  one  key,  the  greatest  production  of 
Morris  is  the  "Stor}^  of  Sigurd";  indeed,  we  might  call  it  the 
masterpiece  of  the  poet,  but  for  the  fact  that  it  is  not 
original  in  the  true  sense.  It  is  little  more  than  a  magnifi- 
cent translation  in  swinging  verse  of  the  Volsunga  Saga. 
But  in  more  ways  than  one,  it  has  become  a  literary  work 
of  extreme  importance.  It  was  through  this  metrical  ver- 
sion that  the  Volsunga  Saga  first  became  known  to  English 
readers  in  a  general  way.  Since  then  we  have  had  prose 
translations. 

I  want  to  speak  about  this  Saga,  because  the  subject  is 
of  extreme  literary  importance.  To-day  you  can  scarcely 
open  a  literary  periodical  or  any  volume  of  essays  on  liter- 
ary subjects  without  finding  there  some  reference  to  the  fa- 
mous Northern  story.  It  is  one  version  of  an  epic  which  in 
various  forms  belongs  to  the  whole  Northern  race;  and 
one  of  the  forms  best  known  is  the  Nibelungenlied  of  Ger- 
many. Through  German  musical  art  the  latter  form  of 
the  story  has  in  our  own  time  become  universally  known  in 
all  great  cities  of  the  West,  for  Wagner  made  it  the  sub- 
ject of  a  magnificent  composition;  the  greatest  of  all  modern 
operas,  dramatically  at  least,  is  certainly  his  musical  pres- 
entation of  the  epic  cycle. 

A  word  now  about  the  place  of  this  story  in  European 
literature.  Medieval  Europe  produced  four  great  epics. 
Each  of  these  represents  the  beginning  of  a  vast  national 
literature.  The  great  English  epic  is  the  story  of  Beowulf, 
and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  it  is  not  the  best.  The  great 
French  epic  is  the  story  of  Roland.     The  great  Spanish 


266  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

epic  is  the  story  of  the  Cid.  And  the  great  German  epic  is 
the  Nibelungenlied  or  Nibelunge  Not,  as  it  has  also  been 
called.  Of  these  four  the  German  epic  is  the  grandest. 
Its  date  is  not  exactly  known.  But  the  best  critics  assert 
that  it  cannot  be  older  than  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, and  not  later  than  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth. 
Therefore  the  date  must  be  somewhat  between  1150-1250. 

But  the  German  epic  is  by  no  means  the  oldest  form  of 
the  story.  The  older  forms  are  Norse.  There  are  poeti- 
cal fragments  of  the  story  to  be  found  in  the  ancient  Scandi- 
navian literature  (you  can  find  them  in  the  library  in  the 
Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale),  and  there  is  a  splendid  prose 
version  of  the  story  in  the  old  Icelandic — this  is  the  Vol- 
sunga  Saga,  from  which  Morris  took  his  poetical  materials. 
Between  the  versions  of  the  German  and  the  North,  there 
are  great  differences  of  narrative,  but  perhaps  not  great 
differences  of  merit.  If  we  could  have  the  whole  of  the 
old  Norse  epic,  we  should  perhaps  find  it  even  grander  than 
the  German.  But  only  fragments  have  been  preserved  of 
the  poetry,  and  we  can  only  imagine  from  the  prose  Saga 
how  magnificent  the  lost  poetry  may  have  been.  And  now 
a  word  about  the  story  itself. 

When  Herbert  Spencer,  some  years  ago,  criticised  cer- 
tain English  translations  issued  by  the  Japanese  depart- 
ment of  education,  he  stated  that  the  story  of  the  great 
swordsman  Musashi  was  not  a  proper  subject  for  the  ad- 
miration of  the  )^outh,  because  it  is  a  story  of  vengeance. 
He  was  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  ideal  education, 
and  from  that  standpoint  his  criticism  is  not  disputable. 
But  ideal  education,  in  the  present  state  of  humanity,  he 
himself  would  acknowledge  to  be  impossible.  It  is  only 
something  toward  which  we  can  all  work  a  little,  slowly 
and  patiently.  In  the  meantime,  the  same  objection  made 
to  the  story  of  Musashi  might  equally  well  be  made  to  all 
the  epic  poems  of  the  Western  world,  and  to  nearly  all  the 
great  romances  of  the  past.     To  begin  with,   the  grand 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  267 

poems  of  Homer,  both  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  are  epics 
of  vengeance.  The  great  story  of  King  Arthur  is  a  narra- 
tive full  of  incidents  of  revenge  and  even  of  crime.  We 
can  scarcely  mention  any  great  composition  which  is  not 
full  of  vengeance,  and  which  is  not  also  admired.  But  I 
wonder  what  could  Mr.  Spencer  say  of  the  Volsunga  Saga 
or  the  Nibelungenlied.  For  all  stories  of  vengeance  ever 
told,  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  pale  before  the  immense 
quarrel  and  cruelty  of  these.  They  are  terrible  stories,  and 
the  Volsunga  version  is  even  more  terrible  than  the  German. 

The  story  takes  its  name  from  the  great  family  of  the 
Volsung.  It  opens  with  an  account  of  the  might  and  power 
of  King  Volsung,  the  heroism  of  his  sons  and  the  beauty 
of  his  only  daughter  Signy.  These  rule  in  the  far  North. 
After  a  time  the  King  of  the  Goths  in  the  South,  hearing 
of  the  wonderful  beauty  of  Signy,  asks  for  her  hand  in 
marriage,  and  obtains  it.  He  goes  to  the  country  of  the 
Volsung  to  wed  her,  and  during  the  wedding  he  becomes 
jealous  of  the  splendour  and  strength  of  the  Volsung  fam- 
ily. When  he  takes  his  bride  South  with  him  there  is  an 
evil  purpose  in  his  heart — the  purpose  to  destroy  the  family 
of  his  bride  by  treachery  whenever  opportunity  offers. 
WTiat  follows  does  not  belong  to  the  German  story  at  all; 
it  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  Norse. 

Siggeir,  the  Gothic  king,  next  year  invites  the  King  Vol- 
sung and  his  sons  to  come  South  and  pay  him  a  visit.  The 
sons  of  King  Volsung  suspect  treachery,  and  they  advise  their 
father  not  to  go  without  a  great  army.  But  the  old  king 
wants  to  see  his  daughter,  and  he  thinks  that  it  would  be 
showing  fear  to  go  with  a  great  army,  so  he  tells  his  sons 
that  they  must  go  as  invited,  with  only  a  small  following. 
They  go.  But  the  suspicion  of  the  sons  was  justified  by 
events.  In  the  middle  of  the  festival  of  welcome,  King 
Volsung  and  his  party  are  attacked  by  an  immense  force, 
and  nearly  all  the  followers  of  the  king  are  killed.  The 
sons  are  taken  prisoners  and  left  in  a  wood  tied  to  trees 


268  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

for  the  wolves  to  devour.  Only  one  escapes,  Sigmund.  He 
hides  in  the  forest  and  becomes  a  hunter,  and  dreams  of 
vengeance. 

But  the  real  avenger  is  Signy,  the  daughter  of  the  dead 
King  Volsung  and  the  wife  of  the  murderer.  Signy  knows 
that  her  brother  Sigmund  is  alive.  But  that  makes  only 
two  Volsungs;  and  two  young  people  alone  cannot  hope  to 
destroy  a  king  and  an  army.  But  Signy  believes  that  three 
can  do  it.  Secretly  she  keeps  her  brother  supplied  with 
provisions  and  weapons,  and  she  resolves  to  raise  up  sons 
to  avenge  the  wrong.  When  her  first  son  is  born  she  begs 
to  train  him,  and  when  he  is  old  enough  to  begin  to  learn 
what  war  means,  she  sends  him  to  her  brother  in  the  wood 
that  he  may  teach  the  lad. 

Sigmund  does  not  much  like  the  boy.  He  thinks  that 
he  talks  too  much  to  be  really  brave.  He  tests  the  lad's 
courage  in  different  ways,  telling  him,  among  other  things, 
to  bake  and  knead  cake  in  which  a  poisonous  snake  has  been 
hidden.  The  boy  is  afraid  of  the  snake.  Sigmund  sends 
him  back  to  Signy,  saying  that  he  will  not  do. 

Signy  almost  despairs.  Must  her  sons  be  cowards  be- 
cause they  have  a  coward  father'?  Suddenly  a  strange  idea 
comes  to  her.  "I  shall  do  as  the  Gods  did  in  ancient  times," 
she  said;  "only  my  brother  can  produce  such  a  child  as  I 
wish  for,  and  I  shall  have  a  child  by  him."  She  goes  to  a 
witch,  who  changes  her  body,  transforms  her  so  completely 
that  her  brother  can  have  no  suspicion  of  what  has  taken 
place.  Then  by  him  she  has  a  son,  Sinfiotli.  When  he  is 
old  enough  she  sends  the  boy  to  Sigmund. 

Sigmund  is  astonished  by  the  extraordinary  fierceness  and 
suUenness  of  the  child.  "Is  it  possible,"  he  wonders,  "that 
my  sister  can  have  such  a  child  by  her  husband^"  The 
boy  scarcely  speaks  at  all,  but  does  whatever  he  is  told,  and 
is  afraid  of  nothing.  Sigmund  gives  him  flour  to  knead 
and  bake  containing  a  poisonous  snake.  Instead  of  being 
afraid  of  the  serpent,   the  child  breaks  and  crushes   the 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  269 

creature  in  his  fingers  and  rolls  the  poisonous  body  in  the 
flour,  and  makes  the  whole  thing  into  cakes.  Sigmund  is 
delighted.     He  sends  word  to  his  sister,  "This  boy  will  do." 

The  rest  of  this  part  of  the  story  you  can  imagine.  The 
boy  grows  up  a  giant,  and  is  trained  in  all  arts  by  Sigmund. 
On  a  certain  day  these  two  unexpectedly  force  their  way 
into  the  palace  of  the  King  Siggeir,  slaughter  his  people  and 
himself,  and  set  fire  to  the  palace.  Thus  King  Volsung  is 
avenged.  But  Signy,  after  having  told  her  brother  the 
story  of  Sinfiotli,  goes  back  into  the  burning  house  of  the 
king,  and  voluntarily  dies.  She  has  done  her  duty,  but  she 
does  not  care  to  live  any  longer.  This  ends  the  great  epi- 
sode of  the  Volsung  Saga. 

The  next  part  contains  the  story  of  the  dragon  Fafnir. 
Here  we  have  no  more  Sigmund.  Smfiotli  has  been  pois- 
oned, Sigmund  has  been  killed  in  battle.  But  there  is  still 
one  child  of  the  Volsung  blood  alive  in  the  world.  This 
is  Sigurd  (the  Siegfried  of  the  German  story).  Sigurd  is 
kindly  brought  up  by  a  foster  father,  a  Viking,  who  teaches 
him  all  the  arts  of  seamanship  and  war.  One  of  the  teach- 
ers who  helped  the  Viking  in  the  work  is  a  strange  old  man 
called  Begin,  who  much  resembles  the  Merlin  of  the  story 
of  King  Arthur.  Sigurd  wants  a  sword,  a  magical  sword, 
that  will  not  break  in  his  hand;  for  he  is  so  strong  that 
common  swords  are  of  no  use  to  him.  Begin  alone  knows 
the  art.  But  he  does  not  wish  to  give  Sigurd  such  art.  He 
makes  in  succession  a  number  of  swords.  Sigurd  takes 
each  one  of  them  and  strikes  the  anvil  with  it,  whereupon 
the  blade  flies  into  pieces.  He  threatens  Begin  so  terribly 
that  the  latter  at  last  is  obliged  to  make  the  magical  sword. 
When  he  finished,  Sigurd  strikes  the  anvil  with  the  blade, 
and  the  anvil  is  cut  in  two  pieces.  In  the  musical  presenta- 
tion of  the  story  by  Wagner,  the  finest  episode  is  this  forg- 
ing of  the  sword.  If  you  ever  see  that  performed  in  a 
great  theatre,  you  will  not  easily  forget  it.  But  in  the 
German  story  it  is  not  Begin  but  the  hero  himself  who 


270  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

makes  the  blade.  The  anvil  is  placed  upon  the  stage  and 
all  the  forging  is  really  done  there.  When  the  anvil  is 
cut  in  two,  a  flash  as  of  lightning  follows  the  blade  of  the 
sword;  the  spectacle  is  very  grand. 

But  to  return  to  the  Volsung  legend.  Sigurd  needs  the 
sword  in  order  that  he  may  perform  great  deeds  in  the 
world,  and  the  first  great  deed  that  he  wishes  to  perform 
is  to  secure  a  magical  hoard  of  wealth,  belonging  to  the 
Dwarfs  of  the  underworld  and  guarded  by  the  terrible 
dragon  Fafnir.  He  goes  with  Regin  to  the  place  of  the 
hoard,  and  meets  the  dragon,  and  kills  him.  Regin  then 
says  to  him,  "Give  me  his  heart — cut  it  out  and  roast  it." 
Sigurd  obeys,  cuts  out  the  heart  of  the  dragon,  and  begins 
to  roast  it  over  the  fire.  But  while  roasting  it,  some  grease 
gets  upon  his  fingers,  and  he  licks  it  off  with  his  tongue. 
Immediately  a  wonderful  thing  happens — ^he  can  under- 
stand the  language  of  birds  and  animals.  In  the  trees  above 
him  he  hears  the  birds  speaking,  and  they  give  him  warning 
that  Regin  intends  to  kill  him.  Thereupon  he  kills  Regin. 
This  story  of  the  dragon's  heart  is  very  famous  in  European 
literature,  and  you  will  find  many  references  to  it  in  the 
poetry  and  prose  of  to-day. 

The  next  part  of  the  story  is  one  of  the  finest — the  meet- 
ing of  Sigurd  and  Brynhild,  the  first  love  episode.  Bryn- 
hild  is  half  human,  half  divine.  Though  born  among  men, 
she  had  been  taken  to  heaven  by  Odin  and  made  a  Valkyria, 
one  of  the  celestial  virgins  called  the  "Choosers  of  the 
Slain."  But  for  a  fault  which  she  committed  she  had 
been  sent  back  to  earth  again,  to  suffer  pain  and  sorrow. 
In  an  enchanted  sleep  she  was  left  upon  the  summit  of  a 
mountain,  and  all  about  her  sleepingplace  towered  a  wall  of 
never-dying  fire.  "Only  the  man  brave  enough  to  ride 
through  the  fire  shall  have  this  maiden" — so  spake  Odin. 

Sigurd  rides  through  the  fire,  and  the  fire,  although  roar- 
ing like  the  sea,  does  not  hurt  him,  because  he  is  brave. 
Entering  the  enchanted  circle,  he  there  sees  a  human  figure 


WILLIAJM  MORRIS  271 

lying,  all  in  golden  armour  not  made  by  any  human  smith. 
He  tries  to  awake  the  sleeper,  but  cannot.  He  tries  to 
take  off  the  armour,  but  he  cannot  unfasten  it.  Then  he 
takes  his  wonderful  sword  and  cuts  open  the  armour  as 
easily  as  if  it  were  silk.  Then  he  finds  that  the  sleeper  is 
a  woman,  more  beautiful  than  any  woman  of  earth.  She 
opens  her  eyes  and  looks  at  him.  They  fall  in  love  with 
each  other,  and  pledge  themselves  to  become  man  and  wife. 
Probably  this  part  of  the  story  is  one  of  the  sources  from 
which  the  beautiful  fairly  tale  of  the  Sleeping  Beauty 
came  into  our  child  literature.  But  the  idea  is  also  found 
in  very  ancient  Eastern  literature. 

The  third  part  of  the  great  story  treats  of  the  history  of 
Brynhild  especially.  Being  a  Valkyria,  she  has  power  to 
see  much  of  the  future;  she  can  foretell  things  in  a  dim 
way.  She  warns  Sigurd  that  there  is  danger  for  him  if  he 
should  ever  be  untrue  to  her.  Sigurd  accepts  the  warning 
in  the  noblest  spirit.  But  the  Fates  are  against  him.  He 
goes  upon  a  warlike  expedition  to  the  kingdom  of  Niblung 
in  the  North.  The  Niblung  family,  after  a  great  battle 
which  Sigurd  has  helped  them  to  win,  wish  to  adopt  him 
as  a  son,  and  the  beautiful  daughter  of  the  King  falls  in  love 
with  him.  Her  father  and  her  brothers  wish  Sigurd  to 
marry  the  girl,  whose  name  is  Gudrun.  But  Sigurd  remem- 
bers his  promise  to  Brynhild.  Then  the  wicked  Queen 
Grimhild,  the  mother  of  Gudrun,  gives  Sigurd  a  poisonous 
drink  that  causes  him  to  forget  the  past;  and  while  he  is 
under  the  influence  of  this  magical  drink  he  is  persuaded 
to  marry  Gudrun. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst  thing  that  he  is  obliged  to  do 
through  the  magical  arts  of  Grimhild.  He  is  obliged  to 
go  to  Brynhild,  and  persuade  her  to  become  the  wife  of 
young  Gunnar,  the  brother  of  Gudrun.  He  rides  through 
the  fire  again,  and  persuades  Brynhild  to  become  the  wife 
of  Gunnar.  She  obeys  his  will,  but  the  result  is  the  destruc- 
tion of  Sigurd  and  all  concerned.     For  the  two  women  pres- 


272  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

ently  begin  to  quarrel.  Brynhild  loves  Sigurd  with  a 
supernatural  love,  and  he  knows  that  he  has  been  deceived. 
Gudrun  also  loves  Sigurd  fiercely,  and  her  jealousy  quickly 
perceives  the  secret  affection  of  Brynhild,  In  short,  the  re- 
sult of  the  quarrel  between  the  women  is  that  the  brothers 
of  Gudrun  resolve  to  kill  Sigurd  while  he  sleeps.  One  of 
them  stabs  him  in  the  middle  of  night.  Sigurd,  awakening, 
throws  his  sword  after  the  escaping  murderer  with  such 
force  that  the  man  is  cut  in  two.  But  Sigurd  dies  of  his 
wound,  and  Brynhild  then  kills  herself,  and  the  two  are 
burnt  upon  the  same  funeral  pyre. 

The  last  part  of  the  story  is  the  revenge  of  Gudrun,  one 
of  the  most  terrible  characters  in  all  Northern  stories.  She 
lives  only  to  avenge  Sigurd.  On  finding  that  her  brothers 
have  caused  his  murder,  she  curses  her  house,  her  family, 
her  people,  and  vows  that  they  shall  all  suffer  for  the  wrong 
done  her.  Her  brothers,  who  know  her  character,  are  afraid, 
but  there  is  a  hope  that  time  will  make  her  heart  more 
gentle.  At  all  events  she  cannot  remain  always  a  widow. 
Presently  she  is  asked  for  in  marriage  by  Atli,  king  of  the 
Goths.  Her  brothers  wish  for  this  marriage,  all  except 
one,  who  is  against  it.  Gudrun  marries  Atli.  This  gives 
her  power  to  plan  her  longed-for  revenge.  She  persuades 
her  husband  that  the  great  treasures  which  Sigurd  got  by 
killing  the  dragon  are  worth  securing  even  at  the  cost  of 
the  lives  of  her  brothers  and  father.  She  does  not  lie  to 
the  King;  she  frankly  tells  him  that  she  hates  her  people, 
and  he  believes  her.  By  treachery,  all  the  Niblungs  are  al- 
lured to  Atli's  hall.  In  the  middle  of  the  day  of  their  ar- 
rival, they  are  suddenly  attacked.  They  make  a  great  fight, 
but  all  their  followers  are  killed,  and  they  themselves  are 
taken  prisoners — that  is,  the  brothers,  the  father  having 
died  before  the  occurrence.  During  the  fight  Gudrun  is 
present  and  the  blood  spurts  upon  her  dress  and  hands,  but 
the  expression  of  her  face  never  changes.  This  is  one  of 
the  most  awful  scenes  in  the  poem. 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  278 

When  all  the  brothers  are  dead  but  two,  Hogni  and 
Gunnar,  the  King  says  to  Gunnar,  "Give  me  the  treasure 
of  the  Niblungs,  and  I  will  spare  your  life."  Gunnar  an- 
swers: "I  must  first  see  the  heart  of  my  brother  Hogni 
cut  out  of  his  breast  and  laid  upon  a  dish,"  The  King's 
soldiers  take  among  the  prisoners  a  tall  man  whom  they 
imagine  to  be  Hogni,  but  who  is  really  only  a  slave,  and 
they  cut  out  the  man's  heart  and  put  it  upon  a  dish  and 
bring  it  to  Gunnar.  Gunnar  looks  at  it  and  laughs  and 
says,  "That  is  not  my  brother's  heart;  see  how  it  trembles 
— that  is  the  heart  of  a  slave  I"  Then  the  soldiers  kill  the 
real  Hogni  and  cut  out  his  heart  and  bring  it  upon  a  plate. 
This  time  Gunnar  does  not  laugh.  He  says,  "That  is  really 
my  brother's  heart.  It  does  not  tremble.  Neither  did  it 
ever  tremble  in  his  breast  when  he  was  alive.  There  were 
only  two  men  in  the  world  yesterday  who  knew  where  the 
treasure  of  the  Niblungs  is  hidden,  my  brother  and  myself. 
And  now  that  my  brother  is  dead,  I  am  the  only  one  in  the 
world  who  knows.  See  if  you  can  make  me  tell  you.  I 
shall  never  tell  you."  He  is  tortured  and  killed,  but  he 
never  tells. 

There  is  only  one  of  the  whole  Niblung  race  still  alive, 
Gudrun.  She  has  avenged  her  husband  upon  her  own 
brothers,  but  that  does  not  satisfy  her.  By  the  strange  and 
ferocious  Northern  code  she  must  now  avenge  her  kindred, 
though  they  be  her  enemies,  upon  the  stranger.  She  has 
used  Atli  in  order  to  destroy  her  brothers;  but,  after  all,  they 
were  her  brothers  and  Atli  only  her  husband.  She  sets  fire 
to  the  palace,  kills  Atli  with  her  own  hands,  and  then  leaps 
into  the  sea.  Thus  all  the  characters  of  the  story  meet  with 
a  tragic  end.  There  is  no  such  story  of  vengeance  in  any 
other  literature.  Yet  this  epic,  or  romance,  is  the  greatest 
of  mediseval  compositions,  and  every  student  ought  to  know 
something  about  it,  either  in  its  Scandinavian  or  its  German 
form.  In  the  German  form  the  character  of  Gudrun — she 
is  there  called  Kriemhild — is  much  less  savage;  and  the  Ger- 


274  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

man  story  is  altogether  a  more  civilised  expression  of  feel- 
ing. But  any  form  of  the  story  (and  there  are  several  other 
forms  besides  those  of  which  I  have  spoken)  shows  the  mov- 
ing passion  to  be  vengeance;  and  to  return  to  the  subject  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  criticism,  we  may  say  that  there  is  no  great 
tale,  Western  or  Eastern,  in  which  this  passion  has  no 
play. 

The  values  of  the  story  are  in  the  narration,  in  the  de- 
scriptions of  battles,  weapons,  banquets,  weddings,  in  the 
heroic  emotions  often  expressed  in  speeches  or  pledges,  and 
in  the  few  chapters  of  profound  tenderness  strangely  mingled 
among  chapters  dealing  only  with  atrocious  and  cruel  pas- 
sions; all  these  give  perpetual  literary  worth  to  the  composi- 
tion, and  we  cannot  be  tired  of  them.  The  subject  was  a 
grand  one  for  any  English  poet  to  take  up,  and  Morris  took 
it  up  in  a  very  worthy  way.  He  has  put  the  whole  legend 
into  anapestic  verse  of  sixteen  syllables,  a  long  swinging, 
irregular  measure  which  has  a  peculiar  exultant  effect  upon 
the  reader.  To  give  an  example  of  this  work  is  very  diffi- 
cult. Any  part  detached  from  the  rest,  loses  by  detach- 
ment— for  Morris,  although  a  good  poet,  and  a  correct  poet, 
and  a  spiritual  poet,  is  not  an  exquisite  poet.  He  does  not 
give  to  his  verses  that  supreme  finish  which  we  find  in  the 
compositions  of  the  greater  Victorian  poets.  However,  I 
shall  attempt  a  few  examples.  I  thought  at  first  of  reading 
to  you  some  passages  regarding  the  forging  of  the  sword; 
but  I  gave  up  the  idea  on  remembering  how  much  better 
Wagner  has  treated  the  same  incident  where  the  hero  chants 
as  he  strikes  out  the  shape  of  the  blade  with  his  hammer, 
and  at  last,  with  a  mighty  shout  lifts  up  the  blade  and  cuts 
the  anvil  in  two.  Perhaps  a  better  example  of  Morris's 
verse  may  be  found  in  these  lines : 

By  the  Earth  that  groweth  and  giveth,  and  by  all  the  Earth's  in- 
crease 
That  is  spent  for  Gods  and  man-folk,  by  the  sun  that  shines  on  these ; 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  275 

By  the  Salt-Sea-Flood  that  beareth  the  life  and  death  of  men ; 
By  the  Heaven  and  Stars  that  change  not,  though  Earth  die  out 
again ; 

I  hallow  me  to  Odin  for  a  leader  of  his  host, 

To  do  the  deeds  of  the  Highest,  and  never  count  the  cost ; 

And  I  swear,  that  whatso  great-one  shall  show  the  day  and  the  deed, 

I   shall   ask  not  why  nor  wherefore,  but  the   sword's   desire   shall 

speed : 
And  I  swear  to  seek  no  quarrel,  nor  to  swerve  aside  for  aught 
Though  the  right  and  the  left  be  blooming,  and  the  straight  way 

wend  to  nought, 
And  I  swear  to  abide  and  hearken  the  prayer  of  any  thrall. 
Though  the  war-torch  be  on  the  threshold  and  the  foemen's  feet 

in  the  hall : 
And  I  swear  to  sit  on  my  throne  in  the  guise  of  the  kings  of  the 

earth, 
Though  the  anguish  past  amending,  and  the  unheard  woe  have  birth : 
And  I  swear  to  wend  in  my  sorrow  that  none  shall  curse  mine  eyes 
For  the  scowl  that  quelleth  beseeching,  and  the  hate  that  scorneth 

the  wise. 
So  help  me  Earth  and  Heavens,  and  the  Under-sky  and  Seas, 
And  the  Stars  in  their  ordered  houses,  and  the  Norns  that  order 

these ! 
And  he  drank  of  the  cup  of  Promise,  and  fair  as  a  star  he  shone. 
And  all  men  rejoiced  and  wondered,  and  deemed  Earth's  glory  won. 

This  will  serve  very  well  to  show  you  the  ringing  spirit 
of  the  measure.  Here  is  an  example  of  another  kind  taken 
from  the  pages  describing  the  first  secret  love  of  the  maiden 
Gudrun  for  Sigurd.  It  is  true  to  human  nature;  the  North- 
ern woman  is  apt  to  be  most  cruel  to  the  man  whom  she 
loves  most,  and  these  few  lines  give  us  a  dark  suggestion  of 
the  character  of  Gudrun  long  before  the  real  woman  re- 
veals herself — immensely  passionate  and  immensely  strong 
in  self-control. 

But  men  say  that  howsoever  all  other  folk  of  earth 
Loved  Sigmund's  son  rejoicing,  and  were  bettered  of  their  mirth, 
Yet  ever  the  white-armed  Gudrun,  the  dark  haired  Niblung  Maid, 
From  the  barren  heart  of  sorrow  her  love  upon  him  laid ; 


276  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

He  rejoiceth,  and  she  droopeth ;  he  speaks  and  hushed  is  she ; 
He  beholds  the  world's  days  coming,  nought  but  Sigurd  may  she  see. 
He  is  wise  and  her  wisdom  falters ;  he  is  kind,  and  harsh  and  strange 
Comes  the  voice  from  her  bosom  laden,  and  her  woman's  mercies 

change. 
He  longs,  and  she  sees  his  longing,  and  her  heart  grows  cold  as  a 

sword. 
And  her  heart  is  the  ravening  fire,  and  the  fretting  sorrows'  hoard. 

A  great  deal  is  said  in  these  lines  by  the  use  of  sugges- 
tive words  and  words  of  symbolism.  Paraphrased  these 
verses  mean  much  more.  "No  matter  how  much  all  other 
people  showed  their  love  and  admiration  for  Sigurd  by 
making  festival  and  public  rejoicing,  feeling  happier  and 
better  for  having  seen  him,  all  their  affection  was  as  noth- 
ing to  the  love  that  Gudrun  secretly  felt  for  him,  out  of 
her  lonesome  heart;  and  great  was  her  secret  grief  at  the 
thought  that  he  might  not  love  her.  Then  she  acted  with 
him  after  the  manner  of  the  woman  resolved  to  win.  When- 
ever she  saw  him  rejoice  she  became  sad.  Whenever  he 
spoke  to  her,  she  remained  silent.  Many  things  Sigurd 
knew — so  wise  he  was  that  he  could  see  even  the  events 
of  the  future ;  but  she  saw  nothing  and  knew  nothing  there- 
after except  Sigurd,  nor  did  she  wish  to  see  or  to  know 
anything  else.  And  when  he  showed  himself  wise,  she 
acted  as  a  foolish  child.  And  when  he  tried  to  be  kind  to 
her  she  answered  him  with  a  strange  and  harsh  voice,  and 
suddenly  became  without  pity.  And  at  last  when  he  be- 
gan to  long  for  love,  and  she  perceived  it,  then  her  heart 
became  cold  as  a  sword.  So  was  the  soul  of  this  woman 
in  the  time  of  her  passion — now  like  ravening  fire,  now 
again  desolate  with  all  the  sorrows  that  corrode  and  de- 
stroy." 

Because  she  sees  still  that  love  is  not  for  her,  the  whole 
scene  of  the  courting — this  is  one  of  the  cases  where  the 
maiden  woos  the  man  without  ever  losing  her  dignity  as  a 
maiden — is  of  consummate  skill,  showing  Gudrun  at  one 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  277 

moment  simple  and  sweet  as  a  child,  revealing  suddenly,  at 
another  time,  the  strange  height  and  depth  of  her,  many 
things  terrible  in  her,  capable  of  the  making  or  the  ruin 
of  a  kingdom. 

I  am  not  going  to  quote,  but  I  hope  that  you  will  notice 
particularly  the  fine  scene  of  the  death  of  Brynhild.  There 
is  a  grand  thought  in  it.  I  did  not  tell  you,  in  the  brief 
epitome  of  the  plot  which  I  gave  you,  about  the  second 
wooing  of  Brynhild.  When  Sigurd  wooed  her  for  King 
Gunnar,  he  lay  down  beside  her  at  night;  but  he  placed  his 
naked  sword  between  them.  This  episode  is  famous  in 
Western  literature.  So  he  brought  her  chaste  to  her  bride- 
groom. And  when  afterwards  Brynhild  kills  herself,  in 
order  that  she  may  be  able  to  join  him  in  the  spirit  world, 
she  shows  her  admiration  of  Sigurd's  action  by  saying, 
"When  you  put  my  dead  body  on  the  funeral  pyre  beside 
the  dead  body  of  Sigurd,  put  his  naked  sword  again  be- 
tween us,  as  it  was  put  between  us  when  he  wooed  me  long 
ago,  for  the  sake  of  King  Gunnar."  The  suicide  chapter 
is  very  grand.  And  the  ending  of  the  long  tragedy  has 
also  a  peculiar  grandeur,  when  Gudrun  leaps  into  the  sea. 

The  sea-waves  o'er  her  swept; 

And  their  will  is  her  will  henceforward ;  and  who  knoweth  the  deeps 

of  the  sea 
And  the  wealth  of  the  bed  of  Gudrun,  and  the  days  that  yet  shall  be  ? 

A  finer  simile  could  not  be  imagined  than  this  sudden 
transformation  of  a  passionate  woman's  will  into  the  vast 
motion  and  unimaginable  depths  of  the  sea.  The  idea  is, 
"Deep  and  wide  was  her  soul  like  the  sea;  and  the  strength 
of  her  and  the  depth  of  her  are  now  the  strength  and  depth 
of  the  ocean ;  and  who  knows  what  her  spirit  may  hereafter 
accomplish"?" 

In  concluding  this  little  study  of  the  romance,  I  may 
say  that  some  of  its  incidents  are  probably  immortal  be- 
cause they  contain  perpetual  truth.     I  am  not  now  speak- 


278  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

ing  particularly  of  Morris's  work,  but  only  of  the  legend  of 
Sigurd.  The  studies  in  it  of  evil  passions  need  not  de- 
mand our  praise,  but  the  stories  of  heroism,  like  that  of  the 
naked  sword  laid  between  the  man  and  the  maid,  will 
always  seem  to  us  grand.  Symbolically  we  may  say  that 
the  wealth  of  the  world  is  still  guarded  by  dragons  as  truly 
as  in  the  story  of  Sigurd;  formidable  and  difficult  to  over- 
come are  the  powers  opposing  success  in  the  struggle  of 
life,  and  the  acquisition  of  the  prize  can  be  only  for  the 
hero,  the  strong  man  mentally  or  morally.  Again  that 
strange  fancy  of  Brynhild  ringed  about  in  her  magical  sleep 
with  a  wall  of  living  fire — I  do  not  know  how  it  may  seem 
to  the  far  Eastern  reader,  but  to  the  Western  it  is  the 
symbol  of  a  real  truth,  that  beauty,  the  object  of  human 
desire,  is  still  truly  ringed  about  by  fire,  in  the  sense  that 
the  winner  of  it  must  risk  all  possible  dangers  of  body  and 
soul  before  he  succeeds.  Still  in  Northern  countries  the 
finest  woman  is  for  the  best  man;  only  the  hero  can  truly 
ride  through  the  fire  of  the  gods. 

I  have  said  enough  about  the  great  poems  of  Morris;  I 
do  not  think  that  it  will  be  necessary  to  say  anything  about 
"The  Life  and  Death  of  Jason,"  If  you  like  his  other 
work,  probably  you  will  like  that  book  also.  But  I  think 
that  the  story  of  Jason  is  more  charmingly  told  by  Charles 
Kingsley  in  his  Greek  fairy  tale,  and  that  Morris  was  at 
his  best,  so  far  as  long  narrative  poems  are  concerned,  in 
Norse  subjects.  I  have  already  told  you  about  his  strong 
personal  interest  in  Norse  literature,  and  about  his  work 
as  a  prose  translator.  In  this  connection  I  may  mention  a 
queer  fact.  Morris,  who  claimed  to  have  Norse  blood  in 
his  own  veins,  became  so  absorbed  by  the  Norse  subjects 
that  his  character  seems  to  have  been  changed  in  later  life. 
He  became  stark  and  grim  like  the  old  Vikings,  even  to  his 
friends.  But  if  he  offended  in  this  wise,  he  certainly  made 
up  for  the  fault  by  that  tremendous  energy  which  he  ap- 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  279 

peared  to  absorb  from  the  same  source.  No  man  ever 
worked  harder  for  romantic  literature  and  romantic  art,  and 
few  men  have  made  so  deep  an  impression  upon  the  esthetic 
sentiments  of  the  English  public. 


CHAPTER  VII 
CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

You  may  remember  my  having  told  you  that  the  best  ex- 
amples of  the  hexameter  in  English  were  written  by  the 
admirable  novelist  Charles  Kingsley.  I  may  have  also 
said  something  in  a  general  way  about  Kingsley's  place  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  but  time  did  not  permit  of  a  spe- 
cial lecture  in  regard  to  his  verse — which,  nevertheless,  is 
of  very  great  importance,  and  is  constantly  obtaining  wider 
recognition.  No  man  of  the  century  who  figures  in  Eng- 
lish literature  had  more  of  the  soul  of  the  poet  than  Kings- 
ley;  and  a  very  great  poet  he  might  have  become  had  he 
possessed  sufficient  means  to  devote  all  of  his  powers  to 
poetry.  He  had  very  little  time  for  poetry.  But  little  as 
the  time  was  that  he  could  devote,  it  sufficed  him  to  write 
the  best  hexameters  of  an  English  poet,  and  to  compose 
songs  which  have  been  translated  into  almost  every  modern 
language.  "The  Three  Fishers"  has  been  translated  into 
Japanese,  so  I  need  not  repeat  it  to  you.  The  "Sands  of 
Dee"  has  been  translated  even  into  Arabic.  Kingsley  had 
the  divine  gift  of  exciting  the  deepest  emotions  with  the 
simplest  words,  and  it  is  to  this  faculty  in  particular  that 
I  will  call  your  attention  to-day.  Later  on  we  shall  study 
some  of  his  hexameters;  but  these  do  not  show  how  great  a 
poet  he  was  nearly  so  well  as  do  the  things  which  read  so 
simply  that  you  might  fancy  a  young  boy  had  written  them, 
until  their  magic  begins  to  stir  the  emotions. 

Let  us  first  take  the  "Sands  of  Dee."  It  is  only  a  little 
song  about  a  peasant  girl  being  drowned  by  a  high  tide, 
which  rose  unexpectedly  off  the  coast  where  she  was  taking 
care  of  her  father's  cows;  but  the  whole  world  has  learned 
it. 

280 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  »81 

"O  Mary,  go  and  call  the  cattle  home. 

And  call  the  cattle  home. 

And  call  the  cattle  home 

Across  the  sands  of  Dee" ; 
The  western  wind  was  wild  and  dank  with  foam. 

And  all  alone  went  she. 

The  western  tide  crept  up  along  the  sand. 

And  o'er  and  o'er  the  sand. 

And  round  and  round  the  sand. 

As  far  as  eye  could  see. 
The  rolling  mist  came  down  and  hid  the  land ; 

And  never  home  came  she. 

"Oh !  is  it  weed,  or  fish,  or  floating  hair — 

A  tress  of  golden  hair, 

A  drowned  maiden's  hair 

Above  the  nets  at  sea? 
Was  never  salmon  yet  that  shone  so  fair 

Among  the  stakes  on  Dee !" 

They  rowed  her  in  across  the  rolling  foam, 

The  cruel  crawling  foam. 

The  cruel  hungry  foam. 

To  her  grave  beside  the  sea : 
But  still  the  boatmen  hear  her  call  the  cattle  home 

Across  the  sands  of  Dee. 

But  for  the  grazing  cattle,  this  incident  might  happen 
upon  any  coast  in  the  world;  everywhere  you  see  the  nets 
and  the  stakes,  and  the  "cruel  crawling  foam."  It  is 
curious  that  John  Ruskin  found  fault  with  this  poem,  de- 
claring that  sea-foam  did  not  seem  to  crawl.  He  was  con- 
tradicted, indeed,  by  many  observers;  but  his  criticism  must 
be  mentioned,  as  it  is  so  well  known.  "Crawling"  means 
moving  like  a  creeping  worm  or  a  slow  winding  serpent;  and 
it  is  true  that  you  do  not  see  this  stealthy  motion  of  the 
foam  upon  all  coasts.  To  see  it,  you  must  be  upon  a  coast 
where  there  is  a  wide  beach  of  smooth  sand;  you  may  then 
see  it  at  the  time  of  a  rising  tide.     The  great  waves  are 


282  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

yet  very  far  away,  but  over  the  smooth  shallows  you  see 
the  water  gradually  rising  and  spreading,  edged  with  foam 
that  really  seems  to  crawl.  I  have  often  seen  this  on  parts 
of  the  English  and  the  Irish  coasts;  and  I  think  that  the 
word  crawling,  so  far  from  being  wrong,  is  one  of  the  very 
happiest  words  in  the  song.  I  suppose  you  know  that  the 
salmon  is  a  very  beautiful  large  fish,  and  can  be  seen  shin- 
ing like  silver,  or  rather  like  pale  gold,  at  a  very  consider- 
able distance. 

Now  observe  the  extraordinary  brevity  with  which  the 
tale  is  told.  There  are  indeed  four  stanzas,  but  several 
lines  of  each  stanza  are  repeated,  or  partly  repeated,  so  that 
the  telling  of  the  story  is  really  done  within  eight  lines  less 
than  the  total  number  of  the  poem.  Yet  within  this  little 
space  we  have  two  very  definite  pictures  created  in  the 
reader's  mind.  The  first  is  of  the  darkening  of  the  eve- 
ning sky,  the  rising  of  the  sea-fog  over  the  sands,  and  the 
scents  and  colours  of  the  coming  storm.  We  are  not  told 
about  the  girl's  being  drowned;  it  is  implied  much  more 
effectively  by  the  statement  that  she  never  came  home. 
The  second  little  picture,  the  appearance  beyond  the  break- 
ers of  the  gold  hair,  together  with  the  reference  to  the  stakes 
of  the  fishermen,  is  a  perfect  water-colour  made  with  a  few 
strokes.  Even  this  would  be  enough  to  make  the  poem 
remarkable;  but  the  supernatural  touch  at  the  end  of  the 
recital,  the  reference  to  the  fishermen's  belief  that  the  ghost 
of  the  girl  can  still  be  heard  at  night  calling  to  the  cows, 
completes  the  work  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  it  unmatched 
among  modern  songs.  It  is  not  scholarship  (though  Kings- 
ley  was  a  good  scholar)  that  can  enable  a  man  to  produce 
such  a  gem  as  this;  one  must  be  born  with  the  heart  of  a 
poet. 

You  will  remember  that,  during  our  lecture  upon  Keats 
last  year,  I  quoted  for  you  the  ballad  of  "La  Belle  Dame 
Sans  Merci,"  as  one  of  the  most  weirdly  beautiful  things  in 
English  literature.     Now  there  are  not  many  poets  who  have 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  283 

the  ability  to  give  the  feeling  of  weird  beauty,  of  ghostliness 
and  aesthetic  charm  at  the  same  time.  But  Kingsley  had 
this  gift,  and  his  poems  offer  many  examples  of  it.  One 
of  these  I  think  to  be  very  nearly  if  not  quite  equal  to 
Keats's  poem.  You  might  say  that  Keats's  poem  probably 
inspired  it;  you  would  be  partly  right.  But  the  treatment 
is  so  different  and  so  many  original  elements  have  been  in- 
troduced, that  it  is  certainly  a  very  original  poem.  Be- 
sides, we  have  in  it  a  Christian  element  which  is  treated  in 
a  totally  new  and  startling  way.  It  is  something  like  the 
story  of  Urashima,  but  the  ending  is  unique  of  its  kind. 

THE  WEIRD  LADY 

The  swevens  came  up  round  Harold  the  Earl 

Like  motes  in  the  sunnes  beam ; 
And  over  him  stood  the  Weird  Lady 
In  her  charmed  castle  over  the  sea, 

Sang,  "Lie  thou  still  and  dream. 

"Thy  steed  is  dead  in  his  stall,  Earl  Harold, 

Since  thou  hast  been  with  me ; 
The  rust  has  eaten  thy  harness  bright, 
'      And  the  rats  have  eaten  thy  greyhound  light 

That  was  so  fair  and  free." 

Mary  Mother  she  stooped  from  heaven. 
And  wakened  Earl  Harold  out  of  his  sweven, 

To  don  his  harness  on ; 
And  over  the  land  and  over  the  sea 
He  wended  abroad  to  his  own  countrie, 

A  weary  way  to  gon. 

Oh  but  his  beard  was  white  with  eld, 

Oh  but  his  hair  was  grey; 
He  stumbled  on  by  stock  and  stone. 
And  as  he  journeyed  he  made  his  moan 

Along  that  weary  way. 

Earl  Harold  came  to  his  castle  wall ; 
The  gate  was  burnt  with  fire ; 


284  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

Roof  and  rafter  were  fallen  down, 
The  folk  were  strangers  all  in  the  town, 
And  strangers  all  in  the  shire. 

Earl  Harold  came  to  a  house  of  nuns. 

And  he  heard  the  dead-bell  toll ; 
He  saw  the  sexton  stand  by  a  grave ; 
"Now  Christ  have  mercy,  who  did  us  save. 

Upon  yon  fair  nun's  soul  I" 

The  nuns  they  came  from  the  convent  gate. 

By  one,  by  two,  by  three ; 
They  sang  for  the  soul  of  a  lady  bright 
Who  died  for  the  love  of  a  traitor  knight: 

It  was  his  own  lady ! 

He  stayed  the  corpse  beside  the  grave; 

"A  sign,  a  sign !"  quod  he. 
"Mary  Mother  who  rulest  heaven. 
Send  me  a  sign  if  I  be  forgiven 

By  the  woman  who  so  loved  me." 

A  white  dove  out  of  the  coffin  flew ; 

Earl  Harold's  mouth  it  kist; 
He  fell  on  his  face,  wherever  he  stood; 
And  the  white  dove  carried  his  soul  to  God 

Or  ever  the  bearers  wist. 

We  have  here  a  story  which  has  been  told  in  a  hundred 
different  ways  by  hundreds  of  different  poets,  both  foreign 
and  English,  yet  perhaps  no  one  ever  told  it  more  touch- 
ingly.  The  legend  is  found  in  Danish,  Swedish,  German, 
and  old  French  literature.  Some  knight,  betrothed  to  a 
fair  lady,  is  tempted  to  break  his  vow  by  a  strange  woman, 
a  fairy  or  enchantress.  He  yields  to  the  temptation,  and 
thereafter  falls  into  a  magical  sleep.  Returning  home  after 
his  waking,  he  finds  that  many  years  have  passed,  that  every- 
thing is  changed,  and  that  all  his  people  are  dead.  In  this 
case  the  Virgin  Mary  interferes  to  wake  the  sleeper;  but 
this  is  quite  a  new  idea.     In  most  of  the  old  Northern  bal- 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  285 

lads  the  knight  who  meets  a  fairy  lady  meets  misfortune. 
If  he  loves  her,  she  enchants  him,  and  he  never  returns  home 
until  centuries  had  passed.  But  on  the  other  hand,  if  he 
refuses  to  love  her,  he  dies  the  same  night.  The  singers 
of  the  Middle  Ages  would  have  made  a  very  long  romance 
out  of  such  a  version  as  that  which  Kingsley  adopted;  yet 
he  has  condensed  all  the  possibilities  of  the  romance  into 
nine  little  six  line  stanzas. 

A  peculiarity  of  Kingsley's  work  is  the  extraordinary  nov- 
elty of  its  method,  even  when  the  subject  happens  to  be 
of  the  most  commonplace  kind.  A  good  example  of  this 
original  part  is  presented  in  his  famous  "Ode  to  the  North- 
east Wind,"  a  piece  which  it  is  said  no  Englishman  can 
read  without  feeling  his  heart  beat  faster.  The  East  wind 
in  England,  particularly  the  Northeast  wind,  is  the  bitter- 
est and  coldest  of  all  winds,  bringing  death  to  the  weak, 
and  suffering  even  to  domestic  animals,  so  that  there  is  an 
old  English  proverb  which  every  child  learns  by  heart  in 
the  nursery: 

When  the  wind  is  in  the  East 

'Tis  neither  good  for  man  nor  beast. 

The  West  wind,  you  know,  is  tempered  by  the  warm  gulf- 
stream.  But  Kingsley  remembered  that  it  was  by  the 
Northeast  wind  that  the  Norsemen  and  the  ancient  Eng- 
lish first  sailed  to  Britain,  and  perhaps  he  was  thinking 
also  of  the  evolutional  fact  that  Northern  strength  has 
been  developed  by  cold  and  hardship.  Perhaps  you  know 
that  Northern  plants  when  taken  to  Southern  countries  mul- 
tiply at  the  expense  of  Southern  plants.  The  strength  of 
the  Western  world  is  from  the  North;  that  is  the  philosophy 
of  Kingsley's  ode. 

Welcome,  wild  North-easter! 

Shame  it  is  to  see 
Odes  to  every  zephyr, 

Ne'er  a  verse  to  thee. 


286  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

Welcome,  black  North-easter  I 

O'er  the  German  foam ; 
O'er  the  Danish  moorlands, 

From  thy  frozen  home. 
Tired  we  are  of  summer, 

Tired  of  gaudy  glare. 
Showers  soft  and  steaming, 

Hot  and  breathless  air. 
Tired  of  listless  dreaming, 

Through  the  lazy  day. 
Jovial  wind  of  winter, 

Turns  us  out  to  play! 
Sweep  the  golden  reed-beds; 

Crisp  the  lazy  dyke; 
Hunger  into  madness 

Every  plunging  pike. 
Fill  the  lake  with  wild-fowl; 

Fill  the  marsh  with  snipe. 

Let  the  luscious  South-wind 

Breathe  in  lovers'  sighs. 
While  the  lazy  gallants 

Bask  in  ladies'  eyes. 
What  does  he  but  soften 

Heart  alike  and  pen"? 
'Tis  the  hard  grey  weather 

Breeds  hard  English  men. 
What's  the  soft  South-wester? 

'Tis  the  ladies'  breeze 
Bringing  home  their  true  loves 

Out  of  all  the  seas. 
But  the  black  North-easter, 

Through  the  snowstorm  hurled. 
Drives  our  English  hearts  of  oak 

Seaward  round  the  world. 
Come,  as  came  our  fathers. 

Heralded  by  thee 
Conquering  from  the  eastward, 

Lords  by  land  and  sea. 
Come;  and  strong  within  us 

Stir  the  Vikings'  blood; 
Bracing  brain  and  sinew ; 
Blow,  thou  wind  of  God! 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  287 

Of  course  the  whole  force  of  the  poem  is  in  the  last  seven 
or  eight  lines,  but  these  are  grand.  There  is  an  allusion 
here  to  the  old  Viking  custom  of  going  to  sea  in  a  storm. 
They  did  not  attack  a  coast  in  fine  weather;  they  came 
only  in  the  time  of  terrible  storms,  when  nobody  was  ex- 
pecting them,  and  when  the  watchmen  were  driven  away 
from  the  coasts  by  the  wild  weather.  Somewhere  or  other 
Prof.  Saintsbury  criticised  the  last  line  of  the  poem  as  very 
strange,  probably  because  it  was  written  by  a  Christian 
clergyman;  for  here  destroying  force  is  called  divine — a 
creed  much  more  of  the  old  Norse  than  of  Christianity. 
But  Kingsley's  Christianity  was  very  Norse  in  many  re- 
spects; he  would  have  said  that  might  is  right,  when  the 
might  has  been  acquired  by  self-control  and  power  to  bear 
pain.  And,  after  all,  we  find  a  very  similar  thought  even 
in  the  poems  of  the  gentle  Quaker  Whittier: 

The  vigour  of  the  Northern  brain 
Shall  nerve  the  world  outworn. 

At  all  events,  Kingsley's  influence  in  making  Englishmen 
proud  of  their  Norse  ancestry  has  been  a  healthy  one,  how- 
ever it  might  be  judged  from  a  severely  orthodox  stand- 
point. As  a  clergyman  and  a  teacher  he  was  never  afraid 
to  take  up  any  subject  that  he  thought  beautiful,  whether 
very  religious  people  approved  of  it  or  not.  A  fair  example 
is  the  story  of  the  search  for  King  Harold's  body  on 
the  field  of  battle.  The  body  was  so  disfigured  by  wounds 
that  even  his  own  mother  could  not  recognise  him.  There 
was  only  one  person  in  the  world  who  could  identify 
Harold's  corpse — that  was  his  mistress.  She  was  sent 
for.  The  story  is  very  beautifully  told  in  Kingsley's 
verse : 

Evil  sped  the  battle  play 

On  the  Pope  Calixtus'  day ; 

Mighty  war-smiths,  thanes  and  lords, 


288  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

In  Senlac  slept  the  sleep  of  swords. 
Harold  Earl,  shot  over  shield, 
Lay  along  the  autumn  weald, 
Slaughter  such  was  never  none, 
Since  the  Ethelings  England  won. 
Thither  Lady  Githa  came. 
Weeping  sore  for  grief  and  shame; 
How  may  she  her  first-born  tell? 
Frenchmen  stript  him  where  he  fell. 
Gashed  and  marred  his  comely  face ; 
Who  can  know  him  in  his  place? 

Up  and  spake  two  brethren  wise, 
"Youngest  hearts  have  keenest  eyes ; 
Bird  which  leaves  its  mother's  nest 
Moults  its  pinions,  moults  its  crest; 
Let  us  call  the  Swan-Neck  here. 
She  that  was  his  leman  dear ; 
She  shall  know  him  in  this  stound ; 
Foot  of  wolf,  and  scent  of  hound, 
Eye  of  hawk,  and  wing  of  dove. 
Carry  woman  to  her  love." 

Up  and  spake  the  Swan-Neck  high, 
"Go !  to  all  your  thanes  let  cry 
How  I  loved  him  best  of  all, 
I  whom  men  his  leman  call ; 
Better  knew  his  body  fair 
Than  the  mother  which  him  bare. 
When  ye  lived  in  wealth  and  glee. 
Then  ye  scorned  to  look  on  me; 
God  hath  brought  the  proud  ones  low. 
After  me  afoot  to  go." 

Rousing  erne  and  sallow  glede, 
Over  franklin,  earl,  and  thane, 
Heaps  of  mother-naked  slain. 
Round  the  red  field  tracing  slow. 
Stooped  that  Swan-Neck  white  as  snow, 
Never  blushed  nor  turned  away. 
Till  she  found  him  where  he  lay; 
Clipt  him  in  her  armes  fair, 
Wrapped  him  in  her  yellow  hair. 
Bore  him  from  the  battle-stead 
Saw  him  laid  in  pall  of  lead. 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  289 

Took  her  to  a  minster  high, 
For  Earl  Harold's  soul  to  cry. 

Thus  fell  Harold,  bracelet-giver ; 
Jesu  rest  his  soul  forever; 
Angels  all  from  thrall  deliver; 
Miserere  Domine  I 

This  is  of  course  an  imitation  of  the  old  ballad  forms, 
so  far  as  language  goes,  hence  the  few  curious  Middle  Eng- 
lish words.  But  without  any  appearance  of  effort,  and 
without  any  attempt  at  decorative  expression,  the  result 
is  very  pathetic  and  powerful,  all  the  more  powerful,  per- 
haps, because  we  know  that  the  incident  is  true.  "Swan- 
Neck"  was  a  pet  name  only,  given  because  she  had  a  very 
beautiful  long  neck.  The  poet  has  not  mentioned  one  cruel 
fact,  that  William  the  Conqueror  would  not  allow  Harold 
to  be  buried  in  a  churchyard.  So  he  was  buried  on  the  sea- 
shore. 

By  this  time  I  think  you  will  see  how  very  clever  Kings- 
ley  is  in  the  art  of  touching  emotions  with  simple  words. 
Had  he  had  the  time  to  devote  himself  to  the  ballad  form, 
which  he  loved,  I  think  he  would  have  done  much  greater 
things  than  Whittier,  in  the  same  direction  of  emotional  and 
religious  song.  As  it  is,  a  few  of  the  things  which  he  did 
in  this  form  are  puzzlingly  beautiful ;  it  is  hard  to  find  out 
how  the  effect  has  been  produced.  It  is  not  art  of  words 
so  much  as  pure  feeling,  always  expressed  in  the  briefest 
possible  way.  I  do  not  know  any  simple  ballad,  in  mod- 
em poetry,  more  touching  than  the  little  composition  called 
"The  Mango  Tree."  But  how  the  emotion  is  produced, 
how  the  art  is  inspired,  you  must  feel  for  yourselves.  The 
subject  is  the  commonest  possible,  the  story  of  a  soldier's 
wife  in  India.  She  followed  the  army  in  its  wanderings 
about  the  world,  and  she  lost  her  husband  and  all  her  chil- 
dren by  fever  at  some  Indian  station.  I  suppose  you  know 
that  common  English  soldiers  are  allowed  to  marry  under 


290  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

certain  conditions,  and  the  government  pays  for  the  travel- 
ling expenses  of  the  woman  and  the  children.  We  have 
here  only  the  thoughts  of  a  very  simple  mind,  remember- 
ing the  past,  but  how  touching  the  remembrance  is : 

He  wiled  me  through  the  furzy  croft; 

He  wiled  me  down  the  sandy  lane. 
He  told  his  boy's  love,  soft  and  oft, 

Until   I  told  him  mine  again. 

Probably  a  village  on  the  Scotch  coast  is  here  intended;  it 
is  certainly  suggested  by  the  use  of  the  adjective  furzy; 
and  the  term  "sandy  lane"  suggests  the  proximity  of  the  sea. 
Observe  there  is  a  very  little  in  this  first  stanza  as  it  stands; 
but  at  the  end  of  the  poem  you  will  see  what  use  it  really 
has. 

We  married,  and  we  sailed  the  main; 

A  soldier,  and  a  soldier's  wife. 
We  marched  through  many  a  burning  plain ; 

We  sighed  for  many  a  gallant  life. 

But  his — God  kept  it  safe  from  harm. 

He  toiled  and  dared,  and  earned  command; 
And  those  three  stripes  upon  his  arm 

Were  more  to  me  than  gold  or  land. 

Sure  he  would  win  some  great  renown; 

Our  lives  were  strong,  our  hearts  were  high; 
One  night  the  fever  struck  him  down, 

I  sat,  and  stared,  and  saw  him  die. 

I  had  his  children — one,  two,  three. 

One  week  I  had  them,  blithe  and  sound, 
The  next — beneath  this  mango-tree. 

By  him  in  barrack  burying-ground. 

I  sit  beneath  the  mango-shade ; 

I  live  my  five  years'  life  all  o'er — 
Round  yonder  stems  his  children  played; 

He  mounted  guard  at  yonder  door. 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  291 

'Tis  I,  not  they,  am  gone  and  dead. 

They  live ;  they  know ;  they  feel ;  they  see. 
Their  spirits  light  the  golden  shade 

Beneath  the  giant  mango-tree. 

All  things,  save  I,  are  full  of  life ; 

The  minas,  pluming  velvet  breasts. 
The  monkeys,  in  their  foolish  strife. 

The  swooping  hawks,  the  swinging  nests ; 

The  lizards  basking  on  the  soil, 

The  butterflies  who  sun  their  wings ; 
The  bees  about  their  household  toil. 

They  live,  they  love,  the  blissful  things. 

Each  tender  purple  mango-shoot. 

That  folds  and  droops  so  bashful  down ; 

It  lives ;  it  sucks  some  hidden  root ; 
It  rears  at  last  a  broad  green  crown. 

It  blossoms;  and  the  children  cry — 
"Watch  when  the  mango-apples  fall." 

It  lives :  but,  rootless,  fruitless,  I — 
I  breathe  and  dream ; — and  that  is  all. 

Thus  am  I  dead ;  yet  cannot  die : 

But  still  within  my  foolish  brain 
There  hangs  a  pale  blue  evening  sky ; 

A  furzy  croft,  a  sandy  lane. 

The  pathos  here  is  not  so  much  in  the  natural  thoughts, 
touching  as  these  are ;  it  is  in  the  sudden  return  to  the  Scotch 
memory  described  in  the  very  first  stanza,  the  sudden  con- 
trast between  the  burning  colours  and  the  fantastic  splen- 
dour of  that  tropical  scenery  beheld  with  the  eyes,  and  that 
pale  Scotch  scenery  of  five  years  before  beheld  in  the 
mind.  This  is  a  bit  of  great  poetical  skill;  and  I  do  not 
know  whether  Wordsworth  was  ever  equally  successful  in 
the  use  of  the  same  art  of  contrast.  I  suppose  that  you 
remember  his  study  of  the  servant  girl  in  London  hearing 
a  caged  bird  sing,  and  seeing  at  once  through  the  gloom 


292  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

of  the  ugly  streets  the  bright  fields  where  she  used  to  play 
as  a  child.  Nevertheless,  that  little  poem  about  the  serv- 
ant girl  and  the  thrush  does  not  reach  the  heart  like  the 
last  stanza  of  Kingsley's  "Mango-tree." 

I  shall  make  only  one  more  quotation  before  turning  to 
the  subject  of  Kingsley's  classical  verse.  Both  in  his  novels 
and  in  his  poems  he  appears  to  us  as  a  constant  observer  of 
small  things  having  philosophical  meanings.  Nature  spoke 
to  him  with  the  lisping  of  leaves,  the  murmuring  of  streams, 
the  humming  of  bees;  even  the  sunlight  upon  the  rocks  had 
a  message  for  him.  But  sights  and  sound  which  are  beauti- 
ful in  themselves  influence  every  poet.  The  surprise  is 
when  we  find  Kingsley  extracting  poetry  from  the  vulgar 
or  the  commonplace.  What  is  less  poetical  than  a  field 
of  potatoes  or  turnips  or  cabbages  *?  Yet  there  is  poetry  even 
here  for  a  thinker,  as  Kingsley  teaches  us. 

THE  POETRY  OF  A  ROOT-CROP 

Underneath  their  eider-robe 
Russet  swede  and  golden  globe. 
Feathered  carrot,  burrowing  deep, 
Steadfast  wait  in  charmed  sleep ; 
Treasure-houses  wherein  lie, 
Locked  by  angels'  alchemy, 
Milk,  and  hair,  and  blood,  and  bone. 
Children  of  the  barren  stone. 

How  many  of  you  must  have  sometimes  had  a  thought 
like  this,  without  perhaps  developing  it,  while  walking 
about  the  field  of  a  farmer,  either  in  winter  or  in  summer. 
The  vegetables  below  there  mean  many  great  strange  things 
to  the  modern  dreamer.  The  substance  of  them  is  indeed 
to  become  milk  and  hair  and  blood  and  bone,  but  it  is  to 
become  even  more  than  that — humajj  feeling,  human 
thought.  Kingsley  calls  vegetables  children  of  the  stones, 
because  only  vegetables  can  extract  the  substance  of  life, 
protoplasm,  from  the  soil.     But  even  in  the  dead  clay  and 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  293 

stones  there  is  life  hidden,  the  same  life  that  beats  in  our 
hearts  and  thinks  in  our  minds.  All  is  life;  there  is  no 
grander  discovery  of  modern  science  than  the  knowledge 
that  the  sentient  issues  from  the  non-sentient,  the  con- 
scious from  the  unconscious.  But  there  is  even  more  than 
this  thought  in  the  sight  of  a  vegetable  field.  Not  only  will 
all  that  substance  be  changed  into  future  human  life;  but 
it  has  been  life  before,  thousands  of  times,  millions  of  times. 
Nor  are  the  elements  of  life  within  those  vegetables  derived 
only  from  the  earth  in  which  thy  grow;  they  are  not  only 
children  of  the  barren  stone ;  they  are  also : 

Children  of  the  flaming  Air, 
With  his  blue  eye  keen  and  bare, 
Spirit-peopled   smiling  down 
On  frozen  field  and  toiling  town — 
Toiling  town  that  will  not  heed. 

The  vegetable  grows,  you  know,  not  only  by  taking  into  it- 
self material  from  the  earth,  but  also  by  absorbing  ma- 
terial from  the  great  blue  air,  which  the  poet  describes  for 
us  as  a  blue-eyed  spirit  gazing  down  upon  the  world. 
Such,  too,  is  our  own  growth,  from  air  and  clay.  Dying, 
all  life-shapes  melt  back  again,  partly  into  the  ground,  partly 
into  gasses  that  mingle  with  the  atmosphere.  Thus  not 
only  the  ground  on  which  we  walk  is  old  life,  but  the  air 
all  about  us  and  above  us  is  life  also  that  once  was  and 
that  will  again  be.  There  is  really  very  much  to  think 
about  in  these  little  verses,  not  at  all  so  simple  in  mean- 
ing as  they  might  at  first  appear. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  Kingsley's  classical  poems.  As  a 
dramatist,  his  long  play  called  "The  Saint's  Tragedy"  is 
a  failure;  perhaps  it  is  a  failure  because  it  was  written  for 
a  particular  argumentative  purpose.  Poetry  written  for  any 
didactic  or  special  purpose  is  likely  to  prove  a  failure. 
Quite  otherwise  was  it  when  Kingsley  attempted  to  write 
great  poetry  only  for  the  joy  of  writing  and  for  the  beauty 


294  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

of  the  thought  in  itself.  He  is,  as  I  told  you  before,  the 
writer  of  the  best  hexameters  in  the  English  language,  and 
that  is  a  very  great  glory.  I  suppose  you  know  that  the 
hexameter  is  not  considered  altogether  possible  in  English; 
it  is  a  Greek  measure,  and  most  of  the  poets  who  have  tried 
to  write  English  hexameters  have  failed.  Longfellow's 
"Evangeline,"  a  beautiful  poem  emotionally,  is  a  proof  of 
the  difficulty  of  the  hexameter,  for  it  is  somewhat  a  failure 
in  its  verse  form.  Tennyson  wisely  left  the  hexameter  al- 
most alone.  Swinburne  succeeded  with  it  upon  a  small 
scale;  Kingsley  succeeded  with  it  upon  a  very  considerable 
scale.  But  in  both  cases  this  success  will  be  found  due, 
in  great  part,  to  the  use  of  Greek  words  and  words  of  Greek 
derivation.  Even  so,  the  feat  is  very  remarkable  in  Kings- 
ley's  case.  He  chose  for  his  subject  the  story  of  Perseus 
and  Andromeda,  a  subject  which  he  has  also  treated  with 
wonderful  beauty  in  prose;  I  refer  to  the  story  of  Perseus 
in  his  Greek  fairy  tales,  "The  Heroes,"  one  of  the  most 
exquisite  books  ever  written.  You  ought  to  know  some- 
thing of  this  story  before  we  make  quotations  from  the 
verses.  The  whole  of  it  is  too  long  to  tell  now,  nor  is  it 
necessary  to  tell  all,  because  Kingsley  in  the  poem  treats 
of  one  episode  only,  the  delivery  of  Andromeda. 

Andromeda  was  the  most  beautiful  of  maidens  in  the 
old  Greek  story,  the  daughter  of  Queen  Cassiopeia.  One 
day  the  Queen  rashly  said  that  her  daughter  was  more  beau- 
tiful than  the  gods,  more  beautiful  than  the  divinity  of 
the  sea.  Thereupon  the  divinity  of  the  sea  became  angry, 
and  sent  a  great  sea-monster  to  ravage  the  coast,  as  a  pun- 
ishment for  the  Queen's  words.  When  the  cause  of  this 
visitation  was  discovered,  the  priests  decided  that  Andro- 
meda should  be  given  to  the  sea-monster  in  expiation  of 
the  mother's  words.  Accordingly  the  girl  was  chained  naked 
to  a  rock  by  the  sea-shore.  But  when  the  sea-monster  came 
to  devour  her,  she  was  delivered  by  the  hero  Perseus,  who 
came  flying  over  the  sea  to  save  her,  moving  through  the 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  2^5 

air  on  winged  sandals  of  gold,  die  gift  of  die  gods.  The 
poem  treats  of  the  discovery  of  the  Queen's  words,  the  sen- 
tence of  the  priests,  the  chaining  of  the  maiden  to  the  rock, 
her  despair,  the  passing  of  the  sea-gods,  refusing  to  save 
her,  the  coming  of  Perseus,  and  the  promise  of  marriage. 
You  know  that  the  Greeks  named  constellations  after  their 
heroes  and  divinities;  and  it  may  interest  you  to  remember 
that  the  characters  of  this  beautiful  old  story  appear  in 
the  figures  of  the  celestial  globe  even  in  these  days  of  mod- 
ern astronomy. 

Perhaps  the  best  idea  of  Kingsley's  excellence  in  this 
verse  can  be  obtained  by  quoting  the  passage  describing  the 
sea-gods.  It  is  rather  long;  but  I  shall  only  quote  a  few 
lines  of  the  best: 

.  .  .  Far  off,  in  the  heart  of  the  darkness. 
Bright  white  mists  rose  slowly ;  beneath  them  the  wandering  ocean 
Glimmered  and  glowed  to  the  deepest  abyss ;  and  the  knees  of  the 

maiden 
Trembled  and  sank  in  her  fear,  as  afar,  like  a  dawn  in  the  mid- 
night, 
Rose  from  their  seaweed  chamber  the  choir  of  the  mystical  sea-maids. 
Onward  toward  her  they  came,  and  her  heart  beat  loud  at  their 

coming, 
Watching  the  bliss  of  the  gods,  as  they  wakened  the   cliffs  with 

their  laughter. 
Onward  they  came  in  their  joy,  and  before  them  the  roll  of  the 

surges 
Sank,    as    the    breeze    sank    dead,    into   smooth    green    foam-flecked 

marble. 
Awed ;  and  the  crags  of  the  cliff,  and  the  pines  of  the  mountain 

were  silent. 
Onward  they  came  in  their  joy,  and  around  them  the  lamps  of  the 

sea-nymphs. 
Myriad  fiery  globes,  swam  panting  and  heaving ;  and  rainbows 
Crimson    and    azure    and    emerald,    were    broken    in    star-showers.^, 

lighting 
Far  through  the  wine-dark  depths  of  the  crystal,  the  gardens  of 

Nereus, 
Coral   and  sea-fan  and  tangle,  the  blooms  and  the  palms  of  the 

ocean. 


296  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET 

Onward  they  came  in  their  joy,  more  white  than  the  foam  which 

they  scattered, 
Laughing  and  singing,  and  tossing  and  twining,  while  eager,  the 

Tritons 
Blinded   with   kisses    their    eyes,    unreproved,   and    above    them    in 

worship 
Hovered   the  terns,   and   the  seagulls   swept  past   them  on  silvery 

pinions, 
Echoing  softly  their  laughter ;  around  them  the  wantoning  dolphins 
Sighed  as  they  plunged,  full  of  love ;  and  the  great  sea-horses  which 

bore  them 
Curved  up  their  crests  in  their  pride  to  the  delicate  arms  of  the 

maidens. 
Pawing  the  spray  into  gems,  till  a  fiery  rainfall,  unharming. 
Sparkled  and  gleamed  on  the  limbs  of  the  nymphs,  and  the  coils  of 

the  mermen. 

This  is  a  fair  example,  not  so  much  to  be  admired  be- 
cause it  is  like  a  picture  by  Titian  or  Giorgione,  but  be- 
cause it  represents  a  triumph  over  a  supremely  difficult  form 
of  verse.  I  have  chosen  the  extract  also  because  it  con- 
tains fewer  Greek  words  than  other  parts  of  the  poem,  which 
are  otherwise  more  beautiful — such  as  the  description  of  the 
maiden's  first  sight  of  Perseus,  at  the  very  moment  when 
she  is  reproaching  the  gods  for  their  cruel t)^: 

Sudden  she  ceased,  with  a  shriek:  in  the  spray,  like  a  hovering 
foam-bow. 

Hung,  more  fair  than  the  foam-bow,  a  boy  in  the  bloom  of  his 
manhood. 

Golden-haired,  ivory-limbed,  ambrosial ;  over  his  shoulder 

Hung  for  a  veil  of  his  beauty  the  gold-fringed  folds  of  the  goat- 
skin. 

The  most  beautiful  word  in  the  above  lines  is  the  Greek 
"'ambrosial" ;  it  is  the  value  of  this  word  that  makes  the 
'line  in  which  it  occurs  so  much  more  perfect  than  the 
-other  four.  Of  course,  without  the  use  of  many  Greek 
words  the  poem  could  not  have  been  written  at  all;  but 
the  longer  extract  which  I  gave  you  contains  remarkably 
few. 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY  AS  POET  297 

My  object  was  to  show  you  by  extracts  the  really  im- 
portant place  that  Kingsley  occupied  in  nineteenth  century 
literature.  It  is  not  a  small  thing  to  have  written  the  best 
songs  of  the  period,  songs  which  have  been  translated  into 
so  many  languages ;  and  it  is  not  a  small  thing  to  have  writ- 
ten the  best  English  hexameters.  Nor  is  it  common  that  a 
man  capable  of  writing  an  immortal  song  should  also  be 
capable  of  severe  verse.  Altogether  Kingsley  must  be  con- 
sidered as  a  very  extraordinary  phenomenon,  a  true  genius 
whose  powers  were  unfortunately  prevented  by  the  difficul- 
ties of  life  from  fully  developing  themselves.  He  was  like 
a  bird  whose  wings  were  clipped.  To  study  him  will  re- 
ward you  richly,  if  you  will  remember  his  limitations.  Do 
not  read  his  dramatic  poem;  and  do  not  be  shocked  by  dis- 
covering in  the  rest  of  his  work  some  short  poems  of  no  im- 
portance. It  has  happened  to  very  few  poets  in  this  world 
to  produce  work  uniformly  good.  Tennyson  did  this;  Ros- 
setti  did  this,  or  very  nearly  did  it;  but  scarcely  any  other 
has  done  it.  You  do  not  read  the  whole  of  Wordsworth, 
nor  of  Coleridge,  nor  of  Byron,  nor  even  of  Shelley.  And 
for  the  same  reason  I  should  not  advise  you  to  read  every 
bit  of  verse  that  Kingsley  wrote.  There  is  some  rubbish. 
But  the  jewels  among  that  rubbish  have  a  peculiar  colour 
and  splendour  that  distinguish  them  from  everything  else 
written  during  the  same  period. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

For  a  number  of  years  the  prose  work  of  Matthew  Arnold 
has  been  considered  to  some  degree  as  affording  excellent 
models  of  English  composition,  and  his  essays  have  been 
studied  as  class  texts  all  over  the  English-speaking  world. 
I  venture  to  say  that  this  has  been  a  mistake,  and  that  the 
value  of  Matthew  Arnold's  essays  has  been  greatly  exag- 
gerated in  regard  to  the  matter  of  style.  Matthew  Ar- 
nold's essays  are  very  valuable  indeed,  in  thought  and  in- 
struction, but  they  are  not  great  models  of  perfect  English ; 
they  do  not  represent  a  vigorous  nor  a  clear  nor  a  con- 
centrated style.  It  is  quite  different  in  regard  to  his  poetry, 
which  is  not  so  well  known,  but  which  is  steadily  growing 
in  the  estimation  of  the  literary  world. 

Now  there  are  two  ways  of  judging  poetry.  It  is  either 
great  or  not  great  by  reason  of  its  form  or  by  reason  of 
its  thought.  And  I  must  tell  you  that  the  very  greatest  mas- 
ters of  form  are  not  likely  to  -be  the  very  greatest  masters 
of  thought.  Shakespeare,  our  greatest  genius,  is  often  very 
deficient  in  regard  to  form.  The  greatest  of  French  poets, 
Victor  Hugo,  is  a  perfect  master  of  form,  and  a  very  poor 
thinker;  he  is  a  magician,  he  is  not  a  philosopher.  The 
greatest  of  German  poets  and  thinkers  of  his  time,  Goethe, 
a  man  who  excelled  in  form  and  thought,  said  in  his  old 
age  that  if  he  could  begin  his  literary  life  again  he  would 
give  all  his  attention  to  the  thought,  and  waste  very  little 
time  upon  the  form.  Among  modem  English  poets  we  may 
take  the  cases  of  Browning  and  George  Meredith  as  opposed 
to  Rossetti  and  Swinburne.  Swinburne  is  the  greatest  mas- 
ter of  English  verse  that  ever  lived,  but  he  is  very  unim- 

298 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       299 

portant  as  a  thinker;  there  are  only  two  or  three  of  his 
poems  in  which  we  find  a  grand  flash  of  thought.  Ros- 
setti  was  perhaps  the  very  greatest  of  our  emotional  poets 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  and  he  was  nearly  as  great 
a  master  of  form  as  Swinburne;  but  Rossetti  did  not  teach 
men  to  think  new  thoughts  about  the  great  problems  of  life. 
He  hated  science,  and  he  was  not,  in  the  modern  sense  of 
the  word,  a  philosopher.  But  Browning  and  Meredith  are 
philosophers,  deep  thinkers,  great  teachers — more  especially 
Meredith.  Neither  of  them  was  a  master  of  form  in  the 
highest  meaning  of  the  term.  They  are  both  great  sinners 
in  the  matter  of  obscurity  and  imperfect  construction. 
They  have  followed  the  suggestion  of  Goethe  to  sacrifice  the 
form  to  the  thinking.  I  should  like  to  be  able  to  speak  to 
you  of  some  poet  of  our  own  day  who  is  equally  great  as  a 
thinker  and  as  a  verse-maker,  but  I  cannot  cite  a  single  name. 
The  nearest  approach  to  such  a  person  is  Tennyson,  but  as  a 
thinker  Tennyson  is  much  below  Meredith.  We  have  to 
take  our  choice  in  this  world  between  two  kinds  of  perfec- 
tion in  poetry  which  are  seldom  united  in  any  one  individual. 
In  considering  Matthew  Arnold  as  a  poet  we  must  bear  this 
in  mind. 

For  Arnold  cannot  be  placed  among  the  great  masters  of 
form.  He  is  very  uninteresting  in  regard  to  form.  It  is 
chiefly  as  a  thinker  that  we  must  study  him,  as  a  thinker 
of  a  very  peculiar  kind.  Not  for  a  moment  could  we  place 
him  upon  the  same  level  as  George  Meredith.  His  value  is 
not  the  value  of  an  expositor  of  new  ideas,  but  the  value  of 
the  man  himself,  a  personal  value,  a  value  of  character. 
Again,  this  character  is  not  important  because  it  is  extremely 
original;  quite  the  contrary.  It  is  because  Matthew  Ar- 
nold's character  and  way  of  thinking  faithfully  represent 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  similar  characters  and  similar  ways 
of  thinking  during  the  middle  of  the  present  century,  the 
thought  of  cultivated  minds.  In  this  class  there  was  a  great 
deal  of  solid  thinking  done,  thinking  based  upon  the  whole 


300  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

experience  of  the  past — the  moral  experience  of  the  English 
race.  Macaulay's  essays  take  much  of  their  value  from  this 
kind  of  thinking.  It  is  not  new,  but  it  is  very  good,  very 
true  in  a  certain  sense,  and  likely  to  remain  so  for  thou- 
sands of  years  to  come.  So  we  find  the  poetry  of  Matthew 
Arnold  to  be  valuable  as  a  crystallisation  of  the  best  think- 
ing of  the  time. 

But  now  we  must  say  a  word  about  the  time.  It  was 
the  time  of  Darwin  and  Spencer,  when  evolutional  phi- 
losophy first  began  to  upset  old  doctrines  and  to  shake  the 
faith  of  the  educated  classes.  It  was  the  time  also  of  the 
Oxford  movement  toward  a  new  religious  spirit — I  might 
say  toward  a  religious  revival.  For  the  sudden  introduc- 
tion of  new  and  startling  ideas  must  always  produce  two 
effects.  One  effect  is  to  destroy  old  ways  of  feeling  and 
thinking.  The  other  effect  is  to  create  a  violent  reaction 
in  favour  of  them.  And  the  middle  of  the  century  wit- 
nessed both  of  these  effects.  Among  the  university  men  of 
Arnold's  time  there  were  three  attitudes  of  mind.  The 
strong  men,  like  Clifford,  went  over  to  the  new  philosophy 
altogether.  Less  strong  minds  became  frightened  and  fled 
for  refuge  into  religious  circles.  Between  these  two  there 
was  a  very  remarkable  class  of  young  students,  who  were 
profoundly  religious  in  feeling  but  much  too  intelligent 
to  refuse  to  understand  the  new  methods  of  science.  They 
could  not  continue  to  believe  in  the  old  way,  and  yet  the 
new  way  caused  them  terrible  sorrow  and  pain.  Intel- 
lectually they  were  sceptics;  emotionally  and  by  inheritance 
they  were  intensely  religious. 

Persons  of  this  kind  suffered  much  from  the  conflict 
between  their  natural  character  and  their  fresh  convictions. 
Most  noteworthy  among  them  were  Arthur  Hugh  Clough 
and  Matthew  Arnold.  Both  became  poets,  both  expressed 
their  feelings  and  thoughts  in  very  good  verse,  but  Matthew 
Arnold  was  altogether  the  greater  man,  and  left  the  deeper 
mark  upon  the  literature  of  his  time.     He  was  born  in  1822 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       301 

and  died  in  1888,  so  that  he  enjoyed  a  fairly  long  life.  It 
was  not,  however,  a  happy  life.  He  was  a  son  of  Dr.  Ar- 
nold, perhaps  the  greatest  English  educator  in  modern 
times.  Dr.  Arnold  laid  down  a  plan  for  teaching  which  is 
still  followed,  which  will  probably  continue  to  be  followed 
for  all  time  in  the  best  English  schools.  He  taught  that 
education  itself,  in  the  sense  of  learning  from  books  or  lec- 
tures, was  a  very  secondary  matter,  and  that  the  first  and 
most  important  matter  was  the  formation  of  character. 
He  was  a  Christian,  of  course,  but  he  was  not  a  sectarian 
in  the  narrow  sense  of  the  term,  and  his  plan  of  education 
was  not  religious  at  all.  It  was  based  upon  the  simplest 
rules  of  social  morality.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  to  be 
good  in  this  world  is  an  extremely  difficult  thing;  and  it 
was  to  cultivate  a  knowledge  of  this  difficulty  and  a  knowl- 
edge of  how  to  meet  it  that  Dr.  Arnold  changed  the  sys- 
tem of  education  in  those  institutions  which  he  controlled. 
It  was  very  important  that  a  young  man  should  study  well 
and  obey  the  rules,  but  Dr.  Arnold  taught  that  it  was  more 
important  for  the  student  to  learn  how  to  master  himself 
and  how  to  be  a  great  man  and  a  gentleman  outside  of  the 
class  room  and  outside  of  the  college.  Matthew  Arnold 
was  severely  trained  by  his  father  in  this  way,  and  he  went 
to  Oxford  a  model  of  everything  that  his  father  could  have 
desired.  There,  after  having  distinguished  himself,  having 
won  several  prizes  in  various  literary  studies,  he  graduated, 
and  soon  afterwards  obtained  the  position  of  Inspector  of 
Schools.  He  kept  this  position  until  the  time  of  his  death, 
but  after  middle  life  he  was  also  Professor  of  Poetry  at 
Oxford.  All  his  literary  work  of  importance  was  done 
somewhat  later  than  one  might  suppose;  it  would  indeed 
seem  as  if  he  had  never  wished  to  become  a  poet  until  after 
he  had  ceased  to  be  a  young  man.  These  simple  facts  will 
help  us  to  explain  the  very  remarkable  merits  and  shortcom- 
ing of  his  verse. 

You  will  see  that  Matthew  Arnold's  intellectual  and  re- 


302  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

ligious  training  must  have  been  rather  of  the  eighteenth 
than  of  the  nineteenth  century.  His  great  father,  with  all 
his  greatness,  was  essentially  a  man  of  the  old  traditions,  a 
man  who  belonged  in  principles  and  in  feelings  rather  to 
the  time  of  Dr.  Johnson  than  to  the  time  of  the  Lake  poets. 
The  principles  and  the  feelings  were  right  and  true,  but  in 
form  they  were  old-fashioned.  To  understand  the  position 
of  Matthew  Arnold  in  a  period  of  transition,  you  must  imag- 
ine the  son  of  an  old-fashioned  samurai^  educated  strictly 
according  to  the  ancient  system,  and  then  suddenly  intro- 
duced to  the  new  condition  of  mei]i.  Such  a  one  would 
necessarily  suffer  not  a  little  in  this  new  order  of  things. 
So  it  was  with  Matthew  Arnold.  He  had  been  made  a  per- 
fect gentleman,  a  true  man,  a  good  scholar,  but  he  had  not 
been  prepared  for  the  times  of  Darwin  and  Spencer  and 
Huxley.  Neither  had  he  been  prepared  for  the  new  feeling 
in  poetry  and  in  other  branches  of  literature.  By  heredity 
and  sentiment  he  was  essentially  religious ;  yet  his  religious 
ideas  were  necessarily  changed  by  the  new  learning.  By 
heredity  and  education  he  was  essentially  classic;  yet  he 
found  himself  suddenly  placed  in  the  middle  of  the  ro- 
mantic movement  in  literature.  And  what  is  more  worth 
while  for  you  to  know  than  anything  else,  his  duties  were 
of  the  most  monotonous  and  unsympathetic  kind.  There  is 
no  position  more  tiresome,  more  uninviting,  more  hopeless 
for  a  man  of  original  power  than  the  position  of  Inspector 
of  Schools.  But  Matthew  Arnold  remained  in  that  posi- 
tion during  the  rest  of  his  life.  Thus  he  was  out  of  sympa- 
thy with  the  thought  of  his  age  in  philosophy,  with  the 
literature  of  his  age  in  poetry,  and  with  the  very  conditions 
upon  which  his  living  depended. 

If  I  have  kept  you  thus  upon  the  subject  of  the  man's 
life,  it  is  only  because  you  should  understand  very  clearly 
Matthew  Arnold's  curious  position  in  English  poetry.  Our 
nineteenth  century  has  been  especially  the  century  of  the 
romantic  movement  in  poetry.     Even  Wordsworth,   with 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       303 

all  his  seriousness,  was  romantic.  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats, 
Coleridge,  Southey,  all  were  romantics.  And  the  great 
Victorian  poets  brought  the  romantic  feeling  to  its  highest 
possible  degree  of  perfected  expression.  It  would  be  hard 
to  mention  any  great  poet  of  the  century  who  escaped  the 
new  influences.  Even  Matthew  Arnold  could  not  alto- 
gether escape  them,  but  he  had  no  sympathy  with  them — 
he  disliked  even  Tennyson;  and  the  all-important  fact  about 
Matthew  Arnold  for  you  to  remember  is  that  he  remains  a 
classical  spirit  in  the  middle  of  the  romantic  movement. 

A  good  deal  of  his  poetry  reflects,  as  you  might  expect, 
his  dissatisfaction  with  the  new  order  of  things,  and  with 
the  tendency  to  new  ways  of  thinking  and  feeling.  One 
of  his  earliest  poems  bears  witness  to  his  sentiment  in  this 
regard.  He  had  heard  a  clergyman  of  liberal  tendencies 
utter  some  advice  to  his  congregation  about  life  in  harmony 
with  nature ;  and  this  advice,  probably  inspired  by  the  same 
kind  of  feeling  which  characterises  the  teaching  of  Rous- 
seau, at  once  aroused  his  indignation,  as  the  following  verses 
testify. 

IN  HARMONY  WITH  NATURE 
(to  a  preacher) 

"In  harmony  with  Nature?"     Restless  fool, 

Who  with  such  heat  dost  preach  what  were  to  thee. 

When  true,  the  last  impossibility — 

To  be  like  Nature  strong,  like  Nature  cool ! 

Know,  man  hath  all  which  Nature  hath,  but  more, 
And  in  that  more  lie  all  his  hopes  of  good. 
Nature  is  cruel,  man  is  sick  of  blood ; 
Nature  is  stubborn,  man  would  fain  adore ; 

Nature  is  fickle,  man  hath  need  of  rest; 
Nature  forgives  no  debt,  and  fears  no  grave ; 
Man  would  be  mild,  and  with  safe  conscience  blest. 

Man  must  begin,  know  this,  where  Nature  ends ; 
Nature  and  man  can  never  be  fast  friends. 
Fool,  if  thou  canst  not  pass  her,  rest  her  slave! 


304  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

This  is  fine,  and,  in  a  particular  sense,  it  is  very  true.  If 
we  understand  by  Nature  merely  the  creating  and  destroy- 
ing forces  of  the  universe,  we  can  understand  the  poet's  in- 
dignation. The  great  thinker  Huxley  well  said,  that  if 
humanity  were  simply  to  follow  the  laws  of  Nature  in  this 
sense,  the  successful  man  in  the  world  would  be  the  man 
with  the  strongest  muscles  and  the  hardest  heart — in  other 
words,  one  would  have  to  become  a  cruel  brute  to  succeed 
in  life.  The  same  teacher  has  also  boldly  said  that  every- 
thing good  in  human  nature  has  been  made  not  by  acting 
according  to  the  laws  of  the  universe,  but  by  opposing  them, 
by  fighting  against  them,  by  resisting  them  even  in  the  face 
of  death.  When  Matthew  Arnold  tells  us,  however,  that 
man  has  something  more  than  Nature  has,  we  see  there 
something  of  religious  feeling  expressing  itself.  A  much 
greater  man  than  Matthew  Arnold,  Shakespeare,  better  said 
that  the  highest  excellencies  of  man,  however  supernatural 
they  may  seem,  have  been  made  by  Nature.  The  whole 
meaning  of  poetry  like  this,  the  whole  value  of  it,  depends 
upon  how  one  understands  the  word  Nature.  Huxley 
could  make  the  observation  which  I  have  quoted,  only  after 
he  had  clearly  defined  what  he  meant  by  Nature.  Nature 
can  seem  to  the  popular  imagination  something  distinct 
from  intelligent  life  and  moral  feeling.  But  Huxley  re- 
minds us  at  the  same  time  that  the  opinion  of  Shakespeare 
is  a  correct  one.  All  life  throughout  the  universe  is  one, 
and  Nature,  in  the  modem  scientific  sense,  would  mean  the 
universe  itself.  A  pupil  of  the  new  philosophy  would 
solve  the  riddle  in  this  way:  "It  is  true  that  man  has  be- 
come moral  by  resisting  certain  natural  impulses,  but  even 
his  resistance  was  compelled  by  other  eternal  and  natural 
laws."  What  Nature  really  says  to  man  is  this :  "It  is  not 
enough  to  obey  me  when  you  find  an  inclination  to  do  it; 
it  is  much  more  important  to  disobey  me — to  make  yourself 
strong  with  constant  wrestling  with  me.  I  love  only  those 
who  can  fight  me  well."     Nor  is  this  all.     Nature  helps  us 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       305 

to  do  this  fighting  against  her  own  impulses.  Consider  the 
most  powerful  of  human  passions,  the  sexual  instinct;  this 
is  natural,  most  certainly,  and  the  natural  tendency  is  to 
indulge  it.  But  without  talking  about  reason  at  all,  we 
have  other  natural  impulses  given  us  to  oppose  selfish  in- 
dulgence even  in  this  direction.  For  example,  there  is  the 
love  of  children — maternal  and  paternal  affection.  These 
forms  of  affection  are  equally  natural,  and  yet  they  more 
than  anything  else  prevent  either  men  or  animals  from  com- 
mitting certain  forms  of  sexual  excess.  The  love  of  off- 
spring acts  as  a  check  upon  the  very  impulse  that  produces 
the  offspring,  it  makes  the  family,  and  the  family  depends 
upon  the  observance  of  certain  moral  obligations.  Again, 
we  have  all  of  us  the  instinct  of  revenge,  which  is  natural, 
and  which  has  its  uses  even  in  the  formation  of  society.  It 
is  natural  that  a  man  should  strike  back  when  he  is  struck. 
But  he  must  not  gratify  even  his  natural  instinct  beyond 
a  certain  extent.  For  there  is  in  all  men  the  instinct  also 
of  self-preservation,  and  when  a  man  indulges  revenge  be- 
yond a  certain  limit,  all  men  become  afraid  of  him,  and  kill 
him  in  order  to  protect  themselves.  Their  action  is  quite 
as  natural  as  the  action  of  the  man  to  strike.  There  is  no 
form  of  virtue  which  would  not,  upon  close  examination, 
be  found  quite  as  natural  as  the  vice  which  is  opposed  to  it. 
Nature  gives  both,  like  the  God  of  the  Hebrews,  who  says, 
'T  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  creating  both  good  and  evil." 
And,  therefore,  I  should  certainly  think  that  the  preacher 
thus  criticised  by  Matthew  Arnold  was  nearer  to  the  truth 
than  his  critic.  But  mediaeval  religion  regarded  Nature  as 
a  kind  of  demon,  inspiring  the  evil  passions  only,  and  the 
poet  argues  only  from  the  mediseval  standpoint.  If  the 
preacher  meant,  with  Shakespeare,  that  "Nature  is  made 
better  by  no  means,  but  Nature  makes  that  means,"  then,  I 
should  say,  his  position  was  beyond  criticism.  It  is  not  a 
case  of  human  choice  at  all ;  we  must  live  in  harmony  with 
Nature,  or  else  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth.     But: 


S06  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

when  we  recognise  this,  we  must  recognise  also  that  Nature 
makes  morality,  and  Matthew  Arnold  could  not  recognise 
that.     His  thoughts  were  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

He  was  much  happier  in  his  philosophy  when  he  wrote 
from  the  results  of  personal  experience,  not  from  the  results 
of  theory.  At  an  early  time  he  thought,  for  example,  of 
what  the  pains  of  life  mean — of  the  difficulty  of  being 
good,  of  the  impossibility  of  obtaining  more  than  one  is 
really  fitted  for.  He  recognised  a  certain  terrible  Justice 
in  the  very  Nature  that  he  had  spoken  ill  of.  A  man's 
chances  in  this  world  really  depend  very  much  upon  his  per- 
sonal power,  more  so  in  Western  countries  even  than  in 
Japan.  But  one  of  the  last  things  which  a  man  can  learn 
is  the  extent  of  his  weakness.  A  young  man  scarcely  ever 
discovers  this.  If  young  men  really  knew  their  weaknesses, 
their  deficiencies,  their  ignorance,  they  never  could  succeed 
in  life;  such  knowledge  would  make  them  afraid.  But 
after  the  great  struggle  is  over,  then  they  learn  why  many 
things  happened  to  them  which  they  formerly  thought  un- 
just and  cruel  and  wicked.  They  begin  to  understand  that 
their  own  deficiencies  were  in  great  part  the  reason  of  their 
sorrows  and  of  their  failures.  Oriental  philosophy  meets 
the  puzzle  of  life  better  than  Western  religion  in  this  re- 
gard. It  teaches  that  the  misfortunes  of  this  life  are  con- 
sequent upon  faults  committed  in  former  lives;  modern 
science,  in  other  language,  teaches  exactly  the  same  thing. 
The  best  things  are  for  the  strong  man;  if  the  man  is  not 
strong,  that  is  the  fault  of  the  race  from  which  he  springs, 
the  consequence  of  something  that  happened  perhaps  hun- 
dreds of  years  before  he  was  born.  In  a  little  poem  called 
"Human  Life"  Matthew  Arnold  expresses  a  dim  perception 
of  the  truth. 

What  mortal,  when  he  saw 
Life's  voyage  done,  his  heavenly  Friend, 
Could  ever  yet  dare  tell  him  fearlessly: 
"I  have  kept  uninfringed  my  nature's  law; 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  307 

The  dimly-written  chart  thou  gavest  me, 
To  guide  me,  I  have  steer'd  by  to  the  end?" 

Ah !  let  us  make  no  claim, 

On  life's  incognisable  sea. 

To  too  exact  a  steering  of  our  way ; 

Let  us  not  fret  and  fear  to  miss  our  aim, 

If  some  fair  coast  have  lured  us  to  make  stay, 

Or  some  friend  hail'd  us  to  keep  company. 

Ay !  we  would  each  fain  drive 

At  random,  and  not  steer  by  rule. 

Weakness !  and  worse,  weakness  bestow'd  in  vam. 

Winds  from  our  side  the  unsuiting  consort  rive. 

We  rush  by  coasts  where  we  had  lief  remain ; 

Man  cannot,  though  he  would,  live  chance's  fool. 

No !  as  the  foaming  swath 

Of  torn-up  water,  on  the  main, 

Falls  heavily  away  with  long-drawn  roar, 

On  either  side  the  black  deep-furrowed  path 

Cut  by  an  onward-labouring  vessel's  prore, 

And  never  touches  the  ship-side  again ; 

Even  so  we  leave  behind. 

As,  charter'd  by  some  unknown  Powers, 

We  stem  across  the  sea  of  life  by  night, 

The  joys  which  were  not  for  our  use  design'd ; — 

The  friends  to  whom  we  had  no  natural  right, 

The  homes  that  were  not  destined  to  be  ours. 

This  grave  poetry  is  not  attractive  at  first  sight,  neither 
is  it  easy  to  understand.  But  when  we  examine  it  pa- 
tiently, we  shall  find  that  it  repays  study.  Let  us  para- 
phrase it:  What  man  after  his  death  could  dare  to  say  to 
God,  "I  have  never  done  anything  wrong,  I  have  always 
obeyed  my  conscience'"?  We  must  not  pretend  to  be  too 
good,  we  do  not  know  anything  about  the  secrets  of  this 
great  sea  of  life  upon  which  we  sail,  and  we  must  not  be 
afraid  of  our  mistakes  in  youth.     If  we  have  sometimes 


308  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

yielded  to  temptation  caused  by  beauty  or  friendship,  we 
need  not  on  that  account  despair. 

Why?  Simply  because  we  cannot  do  as  we  would  alto- 
gether, either  in  the  direction  of  right  or  wrong.  Of 
course  we  should  like  to  do  as  we  please,  instead  of  follow- 
ing rules.  But  that  is  useless  and  foolish.  Whatever  we, 
wish,  good  or  bad,  our  wishes  are  not  likely  to  be  gratified. 
If  we  love  a  woman  who  is  not  suited  to  us — either  because 
she  is  too  good  or  because  we  are  too  bad,  the  result  is  sepa- 
ration. If  we  want  to  live  in  some  beautiful  place  where 
our  lives  would  not  be  useful,  we  find  that  we  cannot  stop 
there.  There  is  a  law  that  governs  everything  which  we  do, 
and  it  is  quite  impossible  for  men  to  escape  that  law. 

Just  as  the  water  that  is  cut  by  a  ship  closes  again  after 
the  ship  passes,  and  never  again  touches  that  ship,  so  each 
man,  as  he  passes  over  the  great  sea  of  life,  has  to  leave 
behind  him  everything  that  according  to  the  eternal  law  of 
fitness  he  ought  not  to  have.  He  would  like  to  have  cer- 
tain men  as  friends,  but  he  is  not  naturally  fitted  to  become 
intimate  with  them,  therefore  he  cannot  have  their  friend- 
ship. He  wishes  for  certain  pleasures,  but  if  his  natural 
capacities  have  not  entitled  him  to  such  pleasures,  he  will 
never  obtain  them.  He  would  like  to  have  a  beautiful 
home;  that  also  is  a  wish  only  to  be  gratified  in  the  case  of 
men  of  larger  powers.  He  must  remember,  to  console  him- 
self, that  he  is  only  indeed  a  ship  chartered  to  cross  the  sea 
of  life  and  death,  and  to  follow  a  fixed  course.  That  is  his 
destiny — not  a  blind  destiny,  but  a  destiny  evolved  by  his 
own  past  history,  by  his  own  inheritance  of  greater  or  of 
less  ability  than  his  fellow  man. 

This  is  sad  in  tone,  but  it  is  also  wise  and  true.  Equally 
true  is  a  piece  upon  the  folly  of  prayer.  Did  you  ever  think 
what  could  happen  if  the  gods  were  to  answer  all  the 
prayers  that  are  made  to  them  every  day*?  The  world 
would  be  very  soon  destroyed.  For  example,  in  Western 
countries  all  Christian  people  every  day  pray  for  food,  that 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       309 

they  may  have  enough  to  eat.  If  they  did  have  all  the 
food  which  they  desired,  the  result  would  be  an  enormous 
increase  of  population  that  could  only  end  in  misery,  war, 
or  destruction  of  some  horrible  kind.  Again,  who  does  not 
pray  for  long  life?  But  many  of  the  miseries  of  this  world 
are  caused  by  excess  of  population,  and  if  all  men  could  live 
as  long  as  they  wish,  the  world  would  eventually  become 
unendurable.  People  do  not  often  think  about  these  things, 
and  Matthew  Arnold  is  one  of  the  very  few  who  make  us 
think  about  them.  In  a  poem  called  "Consolation"  he 
makes  a  series  of  little  pictures  of  life  in  different  parts  of 
the  world,  and  shows  us  how  in  each  of  these  places  people 
are  praying  to  the  gods,  and  how  all  the  prayers  contradict 
each  other.  The  poem  is  a  little  too  long  to  quote  complete, 
but  we  may  cite  the  verses  about  young  lovers  which  con- 
clude the  composition. 

Two  young,  fair  lovers, 
Where  the  warm  June-wind, 
Fresh  from  the  summer  fields 
Plays  fondly  round  them, 
Stand,  tranced  in  joy. 

With  sweet,  join'd  voices. 
And  with  eyes  brimming; 
"Ah,"  they  cry,  "Destiny," 
Prolong  the  present! 
Time !  stand  still  here !" 

The  prompt  stern  Goddess 
Shakes  her  head,  frowning; 
Time  givec  his  hour-glass 
Its  due  reversal ; 
Their  hour  is  gone. 

With  weak  indulgence 
Did  the  just  Goddess 
Lengthen  their  happiness, 
She  lengthen'd  also 
Distress  elsewhere. 


310  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

The  hour,  whose  happy 
Unalloy'd  moments 
I  would  eternalise, 
Ten  thousand  mourners 
Well  pleased  see  end. 

The  bleak,  stern  hour, 
Whose  severe  moments 
I  would  annihilate. 
Is  pass'd  by  others 
In  warmth,  light,  joy. 

Time,  so  complain'd  of. 
Who  to  no  one  man 
Shows  partiality, 
Brings  round  to  all  men 
Some  undimm'd  hours. 

This  has  the  value  of  suggestion  more  than  of  poetical 
art,  as  we  generally  understand  the  term,  but  even  consid- 
ered only  as  form  it  is  admirably  and  severely  correct. 
Cold  Matthew  Arnold's  poetry  certainly  is,  but  it  makes  us 
think.  As  I  said  before,  he  is  especially  successful  in  tell- 
ing the  result  of  his  own  mental  experience,  and  this  is  an 
instance.  Evidently  he  has  thought  a  great  deal  about  the 
world  in  relation  to  human  will,  and  has  recognised  that 
none  of  us  could  have  our  desires  fulfilled,  except  at  the 
expense  of  some  other  person's  happiness.  We  recognise 
this  truth  in  more  familiar  ways  every  day.  For  example, 
when  we  regret  that  the  weather  is  rainy  instead  of  fine, 
we  do  not  reflect  that  this  rain  which  spoils  our  pleasure  is 
bringing  fertility  to  the  crops,  benefit  to  farmers.  Also  we 
soon  learn  that  a  man  sometimes  cannot  become  rich,  unless 
somebody  else  becomes  poor.  But  we  are  not  apt  to  remem- 
ber, as  we  ought  to  do,  that  many  of  our  wishes  fall  under  the 
same  universal  law.  What  we  wish  for  can  often  be  ob- 
tained only  at  somebody  else's  cost.  After  all,  the  world  is 
not  so  very  bad,  for  even  the  most  unfortunate  among  us 
have  some  bright,  or,  as  the  poet  calls  them,  undimmed  hours. 

The  preceding  verses  are,  I  must  tell  you,  rather  cheerful, 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  311 

considering  how  very  gloomy  much  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
poetry  is.  But  it  is  in  his  glooms  and  shadows  that  his  best 
work  is,  the  work  which  affords  food  for  thought  because 
it  has  grown  out  of  the  memories  and  personal  sufferings 
of  the  man.  As  an  example  of  warmer  feeling  in  the  same 
melancholy  direction,  there  is  nothing  more  touching  than 
the  little  poem  which  he  calls  "The  Voice."  Have  you 
ever  noted  that  a  voice  is  one  of  those  things  that  longest 
remain  in  memory  *?  Sometimes  even  after  we  have  for- 
gotten the  face  of  some  dead  friend,  forgotten  even  his 
name,  kind  words  which  he  spoke  to  us  continue  to  resound 
in  our  remembrance,  with  the  very  same  tone  in  which  they 
were  uttered.  The  poet  here  is  speaking,  however,  about 
the  voice  of  a  dead  woman,  remembered  in  his  old  age. 
This  woman  very  often  appears  in  his  poems,  a  girl — a 
French  girl,  probably — whom  he  met  when  he  was  very 
young,  and  whom  he  was  only  prevented  from  marrying  by 
reason  of  some  social  obstacle,  we  know  not  what,  perhaps 
duty,  perhaps  want  of  money,  I  shall  quote  only  two 
stanzas.     The  last  is  more  than  beautiful. 

Like  bright  waves  that  fall 

With  a  lifelike  motion 

On  the  lifeless  margin  of  the  sparkling  Ocean ; 

A  wild  rose  climbing  up  a  mouldering  wall — 

A  gush  of  sunbeams  through  a  ruin'd  hall — 

Strains  of  glad  music  at  a  funeral — 

So  sad,  and  with  so  wild  a  start 

To  this  deep-sober'd  heart, 

So  anxiously  and  painfully, 

So  drearily  and  doubtfully, 

And  oh,  with  such  intolerable  change 

Of  thought,  such  contrast  strange, 

O  unforgotten  voice,  thy  accents  come, 

Like  wanderers  from  the  world's  extremity, 

Unto  their  ancient  home ! 

In  vain,  all,  all  in  vain. 

They  beat  upon  mine  ear  again, 


3ia  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

Those  melancholy  tones  so  sweet  and  still. 

Those  lute-like  tones  which  in  the  bygone  year 

Did  steal  into  mine  ear — 

Blew  such  a  thrilling  summons  to  my  will, 

Yet  could  not  shake  it, 

Made  my  tost  heart  its  very  life-blood  spill, 

Yet  could  not  break  it. 

Why  these  comparisons  about  the  breaking  waves  on  a 
dreadful  shore,  about  roses  blooming  on  broken  walls,  sun- 
light in  a  ruined  chamber,  music  at  a  funeral'?  Because 
the  time  of  youth  and  hope  and  love  is  utterly  dead,  and 
the  memory  of  the  voice  recalling  it  also  recalls  years  of 
pain,  but  not  of  joy.  The  contrast  between  what  is  and 
what  might  have  been  is  itself,  as  Dante  teaches  in  a  certain 
immortal  verse,  the  greatest  of  all  sorrows.  The  voice  re- 
ferred to  might  have  said,  "Take  me  I  I  can  make  your 
life  beautiful — I  am  youth,  love,  and  happiness."  But 
duty  would  have  said,  "Impossible."  The  poem  suggests 
the  desperate  character  of  the  struggle  between  inclination 
and  reason.  Reason  proved  the  stronger,  duty  was  obeyed, 
but  at  how  terrible  a  cost.  The  reference  to  the  breaking 
of  the  heart  becomes  very  pathetic  if  you  understand  that 
the  English  phrase  "to  break  one's  heart"  signifies  to  die 
of  grief.  The  line  "yet  could  not  break  it"  implies  a  wish 
to  die  of  the  struggle  instead  of  living  to  endure  all  its 
consequences. 

The  meditative  character  in  Matthew  Arnold's  poetry, 
in  its  most  personal  form,  is  also  beautifully  shown  in  a 
composition  recording  his  thoughts  while  listening  to  the 
roar  of  the  sea  at  night.  This  piece  is  called  "Dover 
Beach,"  but  the  incident  might  be  anywhere,  on  any  coast 
in  the  world,  in  Japan  as  well  as  in  England.  There  is  only 
the  presentation  of  thoughts  awakened  by  the  sound  of  the 
sea  in  the  mind  of  a  scholar  and  a  doubter. 

The  sea  is  calm  to-night. 

The  tide  is  full,  the  moon  lies  fair 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       SIS 

Upon  the  straits; — on  the  French  coast  the  light 

Gleams  and  is  gone ;  the  cliffs  of  England  stand, 

Glimmering  and  vast,  out  in  the  tranquil  bay. 

Come  to  the  window,  sweet  is  the  night-air! 

Only  from  the  long  line  of  spray 

Where  the  sea  meets  the  moon-blanch'd  land, 

Listen!  you  hear  the  grating  roar 

Of  pebbles  which  the  waves  draw  back,  and  fling, 

At  their  return,  up  the  high  strand, 

Begin,  and  cease,  and  then  again  begin. 

With  tremulous  cadence  slow,  and  bring 

The  eternal  note  of  sadness  in. 

Sophocles  long  ago 

Heard  it  on  the  ^Egaean,  and  it  brought 

Into  his  mind  the  turbid  ebb  and  flow 

Of  human   misery;   we 

Find  also  in  the  sound  a  thought, 

Hearing  it  by  this  distant  northern  sea. 

The  Sea  of  Faith 

Was  once,  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  earth's  shore 

Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furl'd. 

But  now  I  only  hear 

Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar. 

Retreating  to  the  breath 

Of  the  night-wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear 

And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

Ah,  love,  let  us  be  true 

To  one  another !  for  the  world,  which  seems 

To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreamy. 

So  various,  so  beautiful,  so  new, 

Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light. 

Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain; 

And  we  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 

Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and  flight, 

Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night. 

We  may  paraphrase  a  part  of  this,  the  better  to  show  its 
beauty  and  its  relation  to  the  writer's  own  experience. 
Telling  us  to  listen  to  the  sound  of  the  waves,  he  thus  pro- 


314  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

ceeds:  "Thousands  of  years  ago,  by  the  shores  of  the 
Greek  sea,  the  great  poet  and  dramatist  Sophocles  listened 
to  that  sound  as  we  are  doing  now  and  it  made  him  think 
of  the  great  sea  of  life,  with  all  its  confused  sounds  of  joy 
and  pain.  We  also  in  this  nineteenth  century  can  find  in 
that  sound  something  to  think  about,  just  as  Sophocles  did, 
although  the  world  has  greatly  changed  since  his  time,  and 
although  this  is  not  the  warm  coast  of  Greece,  but  the  cold 
Northern  shore  of  England. 

"I  hear  the  roar  of  the  retreating  tide,  fainter  and  fainter 
as  the  moments  pass.  Then  it  seems  to  me  that  I  am  listen- 
ing, not  to  the  sounds  of  the  sea  on  the  English  coast,  but 
to  the  sound  of  the  ebbing  of  the  great  sea  of  religion. 
Once  men  believed  in  God  and  a  future  life;  once  Chris- 
tianity covered  the  whole  world  like  the  water  of  a  sea. 
But  to-day  in  the  age  of  new  philosophy,  in  this  age  of  sci- 
entific doubt,  the  tide  of  religious  faith  is  beginning  to  ebb 
away,  leaving  only  naked  barren  sands  and  stones  behind  it. 

"Then  let  us  who  love  each  other,  draw  close  to  each 
other.  There  is  nothing  left  in  this  world  but  friendship 
and  love.  For  all  that  the  world  promises  of  pleasure, 
proves  to  be  empty  and  worthless,  and  there  is  really  no 
beauty  nor  glory,  nor  rest  nor  happiness,  no  certainty  and 
no  God  to  pray  to.  We  are  like  people  alone  in  darkness 
in  the  middle  of  a  great  plain,  where  armies  are  fighting 
without  light." 

To  an  Oriental  thinker,  I  fancy,  the  sound  of  the  sea  by 
night  would  bring  suggestions  of  the  great  sea  of  birth  and 
death,  in  which  suggestion  there  is  much  consolation  of  a 
certain  kind.  Feeling  that  we  are  a  part  of  the  sea  that 
has  no  shore,  no  beginning,  and  no  end,  we  cannot  feel 
very  anxious  or  very  unhappy  about  the  future.  The  fact 
that  we  now  exist  is  proof  positive  that  we  have  always 
/  existed;  it  is  equal  proof  that  we  never  can  cease  to  exist. 

To-day  this  would  be  the  position  of  the  most  advanced 
Western  philosopher.     But  Matthew  Arnold's  time  was  the 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  315 

interval  between  the  death  of  old  ideas  and  the  birth  of 
new  convictions.  And  men  of  such  a  time  are  likely  to  be 
very  unhappy.  A  man  who  trusts  entirely  to  religion,  to 
belief  in  God  and  Heaven  and  the  reward  of  good  conduct, 
becomes  utterly  miserable  if  he  suddenly  discovers  that  he 
cannot  longer  believe  the  doctrines  which  once  gave  him  so 
much  consolation.  This  poem  expresses  faithfully  and 
painfully  the  thoughts  of  many  men  of  that  time. 

But  it  also  expresses  something  more — the  melancholy  of 
old  age.  You  may  have  read  of  what  are  called  the  "dis- 
illusions of  a  man  of  fifty."  I  do  not  think  that  any  of 
you  could  exactly  understand  what  the  phrase  means,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  none  of  you  is  fifty.  But  you  can 
imagine  a  good  deal  about  it.  When  a  man  has  lived  for 
fifty  years  in  this  world,  he  has  learned  a  great  many  things 
that  never  could  be  learned  from  books,  some  things  which 
are  not  pleasant  to  learn  and  which  make  him  serious.  He 
cannot  trust  his  fellow  men  as  he  did  in  other  times,  because 
he  has  learned  a  great  deal  about  human  motives  and  human 
weaknesses.  He  cannot  believe  in  a  great  many  things 
which  it  is  happiness  to  believe  in,  because  these  have  been 
proved  impossible  by  his  personal  experience.  He  has 
learned  that  scarcely  any  honest  ambition  can  be  gratified 
except  at  such  a  cost  that  the  result  is  not  worth  struggling 
for.  And  then  his  capacity  for  pleasure  has  become  very 
much  lessened.  I  do  not  mean  only  that  his  bodily  strength 
has  been  diminished  and  his  passions  impaired,  but  I  mean 
especially  that  his  mind  has  become  less  sensitive  either  to 
pleasure  or  to  pain.  The  sweet  fresh  air  that  delights  the 
boy,  the  beauty  of  a  summer  sunset  or  an  autumn  afternoon, 
the  singing  of  birds,  the  blossoming  of  flowers — all  these 
make  very  little  impression  upon  the  man  who  is  beginning 
to  grow  old.  And  Matthew  Arnold  is,  I  think,  almost  the 
only  Englishman  who  has  written  a  poem-  upon  the  subject. 
Of  course  he  is  expressing  only  his  own  feeling,  but  this  is 
the  feeling  of  thousands  and  thousands  who  have  attempted 


S16  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

to  do  what  he  tried  to  do,  and  who  have  failed  even  more 
than  he  failed. 

GROWING  OLD 

What  is  it  to  grow  old? 

Is  it  to  lose  the  glory  of  the  form, 

The  lustre  of  the  eye"? 

Is  it  for  beauty  to  forego  her  wreath? 

— Yes,  but  not  this  alone. 

Is  it  to  feel  our  strength — 

Not  our  bloom  only,  but  our  strength — decay? 

Is  it  to  feel  each  limb 

Grow  stiffer,  every  function  less  exact. 

Each  nerve  more  loosely  strung? 

Yes,  this,  and  more;  but  not 

Ah,  'tis  not  what  in  youth  we  dream'd  'twould  be  I 

'Tis  not  to  have  our  life 

Mellow'd  and  soften'd  as  with  sunset-glow, 

A  golden  day's  decline. 

'Tis  not  to  see  the  world 

As  from  a  height,  with  rapt  prophetic  eyes, 

And  heart  profoundly  stirr'd ; 

And  weep,  and  feel  the  fulness  of  the  past, 

The  years  that  are  no  more. 

It  is  to  spend  long  days 

And  not  once  feel  that  we  were  ever  young ; 

It  is  to  add,  immured 

In  the  hot  prison  of  the  present,  month 

To  month  with  weary  pain. 

It  is  to  suffer  this, 

And  feel  but  half,  and  feebly,  what  we  feel. 

Deep  in  our  hidden  heart 

Festers  the  dull  remembrance  of  a  change, 

But  no  emotion — none. 

It  is — last  stage  of  all — 

When  we  are  frozen  up  within,  and  quite 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       317 

The  phantom  of  ourselves, 

To  hear  the  world  applaud  the  hollow  ghost 

Which  blamed  the  living  man. 

I  suppose  that  this  is  one  of  the  most  horrible  pictures  of 
old  age  ever  written,  but  it  is  true  of  the  old  age  of  many 
a  good  and  great  man  in  the  history  of  civilisation.  It  was 
certainly  the  history  of  Matthew  Arnold's  old  age.  Only 
at  a  very  late  day  did  success  come  to  him,  when  he  could 
no  longer  enjoy  it.  But  you  must  not  think  that  his  poeti- 
cal complaint  signifies  weakness.  He  was  too  well  trained 
by  his  father  to  show  weakness.  The  despair  of  the  pessi- 
mist never  took  hold  upon  him.  He  only  thought  of  him- 
self as  a  soldier  in  a  losing  battle,  certain  of  defeat,  but 
resolved  to  die  bravely.  The  brave  note,  mixed  with  a 
little  bitterness,  we  find  in  another  poem  of  much  simpler 
form  called  "The  Last  Word." 

Creep  into  thy  narrow  bed, 
Creep,  and  let  no  more  be  said ! 
Vain  thy  onset!  all  stands  fast. 
Thou  thyself  must  break  at  last. 

Let  the  long  contention  cease ! 
Geese  are  swans,  and  swans  are  geese. 
Let  them  have  it  how  they  will  I 
Thou  art  tired;  best  be  still. 

In  Other  words,  "Go  to  your  grave  in  silence,  and  stop 
talking  truth.  It  is  no  use.  You  have  been  fighting  with 
a  society  too  powerful  for  you,  prejudices  too  strong  for 
you,  superstitions  impregnable.  Society,  prejudice,  super- 
stition, are  not  only  stronger  than  you,  they  are  longer 
lived;  you  must  die  before  they  die.  Stop  your  hopeless 
fighting.  Of  course  you  know  that  geese  are  not  swans,  but 
since  people  persist  in  saying  that  they  are  swans,  it  is  no 
use  for  you  to  be  angry  with  them.  Why  be  angry  with 
stupidity?" 


318       MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

But  the  reformer  states  that  he  has  other  reasons  to  be 
angry,  in  the  injustice  and  cruelty  and  malice  of  men. 

They  out-talk'd  thee,  hiss'd  thee,  tore  thee  ? 
Better  men  fared  thus  before  thee ; 
Fired  their  ringing  shot  and  pass'd, 
Hotly  charged — and  sank  at  last. 

Charge  once  more,  then,  and  be  dumb ! 
Let  the  victors,  when  they  come, 
When  the  forts  of  folly  fall, 
Find  thy  body  by  the  wall ! 

This  is  excellent  advice  to  any  reformer  who  despairs  or 
feels  like  despairing.  It  is  good  to  remember  that  no  mat- 
ter what  injustice  the  world  may  do  to  you,  it  has  done 
injustice  to  greater  men  in  past  times,  and  will  doubtless 
continue  to  do  greater  injustice  to  still  greater  men  in  the 
future.  If  you  want  to  benefit  the  world,  you  must  make 
up  your  mind  about  two  things;  you  must  be  content  to 
sacrifice  your  life  or  your  happiness  or  both,  and  whatever 
you  do,  you  must  not  expect  to  be  told  or  to  hear  of  your 
own  success.  The  new  truth  which  you  wish  to  teach  will 
certainly  be  some  day  accepted,  if  it  is  truth,  but  you  must 
not  hope  to  have  even  the  reward  of  seeing  it  accepted. 
Great  reforms  demand  the  absolute  sacrifice  of  self. 

Now,  the  thinker  who  observes  the  tendencies  of  modem 
civilisation  often  finds  reason  to  doubt  not  only  the  possi- 
bilities of  ethical  reform,  but  the  possibilities  even  of  men- 
tal or  moral  development  in  the  highest  sense.  It  seems  to 
him  that  the  necessities  of  this  civilisation  are  turning  men's 
minds  away  from  noble  ideas  to  selfish  and  material  ambi- 
tions. It  seems  to  him  that  even  the  feeling  which  makes 
poetry  must  die.  It  seems  to  him  that  the  spiritual  and 
moral  ideals  of  the  past  must  be  forgotten  in  the  great 
hurried  hungry  struggle  for  money  and  position.  The 
world  is  becoming  material  in  the  ugliest  meaning  of  the 
term.     The  great  cities  are  drawing  away  from  nature  the 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       319 

millions  who  used  to  feel  and  know  the  poetry  of  country 
life.  The  fields  are  no  longer  cultivated  by  men,  but  by 
machinery,  and  vast  parts  of  America  and  of  other  countries 
which  are  tilled  by  steam,  remain  practically  uninhabited 
except  in  the  season  of  the  harvests.  Everywhere  the  popu- 
lation increases,  and  always  the  struggle  for  existence  be- 
comes fiercer,  and  always  the  duties  of  life  become  heavier 
and  harder.  Will  there  be  in  the  future  any  time  to  think, 
any  time  to  feel,  any  time  to  be  happy,  any  time  to  cherish 
noble  motives  and  sublime  thoughts'?  Certainly  things 
look  dark,  Herbert  Spencer  told  us  that  the  period  of  the 
greatest  possible  human  suffering  has  yet  to  come.  Scien- 
tific civilisation  cannot  save  us  from  that;  on  the  contrary 
it  will  bring  it  about,  by  increasing  the  population  of 
the  world  to  a  degree  never  before  known.  The  struggle 
for  life  in  Europe  will  become  like  the  struggle  for  life  in 
China. 

All  these  thoughts  are  suggested  in  a  little  poem  by  Mat- 
thew Arnold  called  "The  Future."  In  this  poem  the  course 
of  human  progress  is  compared  to  the  flowing  of  a  river, 
down  which  the  soul  of  man  is  floating.  The  idea  of  the 
River  of  Life  is  very  old,  and  has  been  used  by  many  thou- 
sands of  poets,  but  Matthew  Arnold  has  treated  the  subject 
in  a  new  way.  In  the  first  part  of  the  poem  there  is  not 
much  which  is  new,  only  a  comparison  of  humanity's  first 
joy  in  the  life  of  the  world  to  the  joy  of  a  child  in  a  boat 
upon  a  little  country  stream.  Somewhat  further  on,  as  it 
recedes  from  its  source,  the  stream  broadens,  and  great 
shapes  of  mountains  and  forests  appear  on  the  horizon. 
"As  is  the  world  on  the  banks,  so  is  the  mind  of  man." 
Human  knowledge  of  the  world  itself  has  always  been,  and 
still  is,  limited  to  impressions  of  the  senses,  and  these  are 
illusions.  But  while  these  illusions  were  beautiful  in  the 
past,  men  were  comparatively  happy.  They  were  close  to 
nature  in  ancient  times;  they  did  not  live  in  great  gloomy 
cities,  full  of  dust  and  smoke,  but  they  delighted  in  their 


320  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

life  in  forests  and  fields,  on  mountains  and  by  rivers.  The 
course  of  progress  was  then  like  the  course  of  a  river  wind- 
ing through  sunlit  valleys  and  plains,  under  a  bright  blue 
sky.  But  with  the  development  of  material  civilisation  the 
landscape  darkens.  Great  cities  appear  on  the  banks  of  a 
winding  stream,  blackening  the  sky  with  the  smoke  of  their 
innumerable  fires,  and  the  water  itself  is  no  longer  clear  and 
pure.  Still  the  spirit  of  man  floats  on  with  the  stream,  and 
this  spirit  feels  the  sadness  of  the  great  change.  Does  this 
sadness  signify  wisdom?  Perhaps  so,  but  as  yet  only  in  a 
relative  sense — that  is,  in  relation  to  the  world  of  which 
man  forms  a  part.  But  of  the  origin  of  the  world  itself, 
of  the  source  of  the  stream  of  Being,  or  of  the  destiny  of 
the  stream,  we  know  nothing  at  all.  We  float  on,  watch- 
ing the  banks,  but  we  do  not  know  where  we  came  from  nor 
whither  we  are  going.  This  only  we  know,  that  always  as 
we  float  with  the  stream  the  cities  on  either  bank  become 
larger  and  more  tumultuous  and  the  sky  darker  and  the 
river  stormier,  and  the  horizon  is  black  before  us,  so  black 
that  we  cannot  see. 

And  we  say  that  repose  has  fled 

Forever  the  course  of  the  river  of  Time. 

That  cities  will  crowd  to  its  edge 

In  a  blacker,  incessanter  line; 

That  the  din  will  be  more  on  its  banks, 

Denser  the  trade  on  its  stream, 

Flatter  the  plain  where  it  flows. 

Fiercer  the  sun  overhead. 

That  never  will  those  on  its  breast 

See  an  ennobling  sight, 

Drink  of  the  feeling  of  quiet  again. 

That  is,  we  feel  as  if  the  joy  of  calm  had  forever  been  de- 
stroyed by  this  new  industrial  civilisation,  and  the  future, 
as  we  behold  it,  looks  so  gloomy  that  we  doubt  whether 
mankind  can  ever  again  be  happy. 

Still,  who  can  predict  what  changes  will  come?     A  hun- 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       321 

dred  years  ago,  who  could  have  believed  in  the  power  which 
science  has  given  us  to-day^  There  may  be  a  hope  that 
some  new  and  totally  unimaginable  faculties  will  yet  re- 
store to  us  something  of  the  happiness  of  those  conditions  of 
peace  which  we  have  left  behind.  In  the  suggestion  of  this 
hope,  the  poet  gives  us  one  beautiful  touch  of  mysticism: 

But  what  was  before  us  we  know  not, 
And  we  know  not  what  shall  succeed. 

Haply,  the  river  of  Time — 

As  it  grows,  as  the  towns  on  its  marge 

Fling  their  wavering  lights 

On  a  wider,  statelier  stream — 

May  acquire,  if  not  the  calm 

Of  its  early  mountainous  shore, 

Yet  a  solemn  peace  of  its  own. 

And  the  width  of  the  waters,  the  hush 

Of  the  grey  expanse  where  he  floats, 

Freshening  its  currents  and  spotted  with  foam 

As  it  draws  to  the  Ocean,  may  strike 

Peace  to  the  soul  of  the  man  on  its  breast — 

As  the  pale  waste  widens  around  him. 

As  the  banks  fade  dimmer  away. 

As  the  stars  come  out,  and  the  night-wind 

Brings  up  the  stream 

Murmurs  and  scents  of  the  infinite  sea. 

You  remember  the  previous  description  of  the  mountain 
stream  descending  to  the  plain,  and  widening,  and  always 
flowing  over  flatter  ground.  Observe  that  the  word  "flat" 
means  not  only  level,  but  also  commonplace,  dull,  uninter- 
esting, vulgar.  What  gives  poetry  life  is  our  sense  of  the 
beautiful,  our  sense  of  duty,  our  idea  of  conditions  better 
than  any  which  we  have.  Now,  the  tendency  of  industrial 
civilisation  is  to  compel  men  to  think  more  about  money 
than  ever  before,  and  less  about  truth  and  beauty  and  di- 
vine things.  This  is  what  the  poet  means  when  he  ex- 
presses the  fear  that  the  River  of  Life  will  be  flowing  in 


322  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

the  future  through  a  flatter  world  than  now,  more  selfish, 
more  vulgar.  It  does  indeed  seem  as  if  mankind  were  going 
to  lose  all  spiritual  ambitions,  and  to  think  only  about  com- 
monplace and  vulgar  things.  We  imagine  greater  cities, 
greater  wealth,  more  people,  more  material  power  in  the 
future,  but  we  cannot  at  the  same  time  imagine  great  no- 
bility of  mind,  greater  beauty  of  thought,  or  finer  qualities 
of  emotion.  However,  says  the  poet,  we  do  not  know  the 
future;  we  do  not  even  know  the  past.  Being  ignorant  as 
to  where  we  came  from,  how  can  we  tell  whither  we  are 
going"?  One  thing  only  is  certain — that  we  issued  origi- 
nally out  of  the  Infinite  Mystery  and  that  we  must  return 
to  the  Mystery.  Outside  of  us,  outside  this  world,  all 
about  us  the  Infinite  lies  like  a  sea  without  shore,  and  the 
drifting  of  all  life  is  to  that  fathomless  deep.  Thither 
flows  this  River  of  Time,  with  the  spirit  of  man  floating 
upon  it  through  countless  different  kinds  of  illusions,  like 
the  scenery  of  landscapes.  When  and  how  and  where  the 
stream  will  enter  the  sea,  we  cannot  tell.  But  it  is  possible 
that  at  some  time,  before  we  all  pass  back  into  that  Un- 
known out  of  which  we  came,  some  sudden  revelation  will 
come  to  us.  Mankind  will  continue  to  learn,  and  continue 
to  hope,  and  continue  to  pray  for  rest  through  all  the  cen- 
turies, while  the  world  grows  older  and  approaches  the  end. 
If  you  have  ever  descended  a  river  to  the  sea  in  a  boat,  you 
will  remember  the  pleasure  of  the  moment  when  you  first 
began  to  smell  the  salt  air  of  the  sea,  and  to  feel  the  pure, 
fresh  sea  wind  in  your  face.  At  once  you  feel  stronger  and 
happier,  and  all  your  senses  seem  to  become  sharper  and 
finer.  So  it  may  be  with  humanity,  as  it  descends  the  River 
of  Time  toward  the  Sea  of  Eternity.  Perhaps  it  will  be 
only  in  the  moment  when  we  first  perceive  the  odour  of  that 
Infinite  Sea,  and  hear  far  away  the  muttering  of  its  waves — 
that  is  to  say,  perhaps  it  will  only  be  when  the  life  of  the 
world  is  nearly  done — that  we  shall  suddenly  discover  some 
great  truth  that  will  make  us  happy. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

In  his  power  of  suggestiveness,  Matthew  Arnold  is  cer- 
tainly very  remarkable,  and  not  only  when  he  treats  of 
large  subjects.  We  notice  this  characteristic  still  more 
when  he  touches  upon  slighter  things  than  the  destiny  of 
man  or  the  meaning  of  the  universe.  For  example,  he  has 
written  a  little  poem  about  the  great  French  actress  Rachel, 
which  is,  I  think,  a  very  wonderful  thing,  because  the  whole 
story  and  meaning  of  her  life  is  put  into  fourteen  lines. 
You  know  Rachel  was  the  greatest  actress  of  modern 
times.  She  was  a  Jewess,  and  always  remained  true  to  her 
religion  and  race,  but  she  found  pleasure  sometimes  in  read- 
ing Christian  and  other  religious  books.  She  was  the  child 
of  very  poor  people,  and  belonged  to  an  oppressed  race, 
yet  she  rose  to  the  very  highest  rank  in  her  profession,  and 
obtained  from  kings  and  emperors  the  highest  marks  of 
honour  and  esteem.  She  never  married,  and  she  died,  before 
her  time,  of  consumption.  What  Matthew  Arnold  writes 
about  her  might  be  called  a  little  study  in  the  great  problem 
of  heredity. 

Sprung  from  the  blood  of  Israel's  scattered  race, 
At  a  mean  inn  in  German  Aarau  born, 
To  forms  from  antique  Greece  and  Rome  uptorn, 
Trick'd  out  with  a  Parisian  speech  and  face, 

Imparting  life  renew'd,  old  classic  grace ; 
Then,  soothing  with  thy  Christian  strain  forlorn, 
A-Kempis !  her  departing  soul  outworn. 
While  by  her  bedside  Hebrew  rites  have  place — 

Ah,  not  the  radiant  spirit  of  Greece  alone 

She  had — one  power,  which  made  her  breast  its  home ! 

In  her,  like  us,  there  clash'd,  contending  powers, 

Germany,  France,  Christ,  Moses,  Athens,  Rome. 
The  strife,  the  mixture  in  her  soul,  are  ours ; 
Her  genius  and  her  glory  are  her  own. 

Here  was  a  curious  mingling  of  emotional  elements, 
artistic  elements,  and  race  elements — a  Jewess  acting  as  a 


824       MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

Greek  woman  of  the  past  in  the  Paris  of  the  present.  But 
there  was  yet  another  curious  fact,  the  interest  that  this 
Jewess  took  in  Christian  mysticism.  When  she  was  dying 
the  prayers  repeated  at  her  bedside  were  Hebrew  prayers, 
but  she  read  in  those  moments  "The  Imitation  of  Christ"  by 
Thomas  a  Kempis.  So  we  have  in  her  history  mingled 
religious  sentiments  also.  What  does  such  a  life  as  this 
signify*? 

That  is  the  question  which  Matthew  Arnold  asks  and 
answers  in  his  own  way.  He  says:  Rachel  had  genius 
and  fame  born  of  genius ;  these  were  peculiar  to  her ;  nobody 
else  had  such  a  genius  or  such  a  fame.  But  Rachel  had 
nothing  else  which  other  people  have  not.  Just  as  in  her 
soul  there  were  mingled  the  spirit  of  Greece  and  the  spirit 
of  Rome,  of  Judaism  and  Christianity,  of  modern  Germany 
and  modern  France,  so  with  every  one  who  inherits  the 
fruits  of  the  ancient  and  the  modern  civilisation.  It  is  not 
only  a  mental  inheritance  which  many  of  us  have,  there  is 
a  physical  inheritance  also — sometimes  the  blood  of  many 
races  in  one  person.  I  suppose  you  know  the  curious  fact 
that  most  of  the  great  Englishmen  of  the  present  century, 
even  of  the  men  of  science,  are  men  who  have  descended 
from  unions  between  different  races.  Even  Tennyson  had 
some  French  blood.  The  English  race  itself  has  been  made 
by  a  mingling  of  many  peoples.  Scientifically,  there  is  no 
unmixed  race.  Is  it,  the  poet  asks,  for  this  reason  that  the 
minds  of  many  of  us  are  constantly  in  a  state  of  struggle, 
as  though  between  impulses  and  emotions  originally  belong- 
ing to  different  civilisations,  different  religions,  different 
nations*?  Very  possibly,  but  every  man  who  passes  through 
the  whole  range  of  modern  university  education  must  have 
the  like  experience  and  like  struggle,  for  he  mentally  in- 
herits not  only  the  wisdom  but  the  conflicting  emotions  and 
sentiments  of  many  vanished  civilisations. 

The  sonnet  is  the  form  generally  chosen  by  Matthew 
Arnold  for  short  philosophical  studies  of  this  kind.     It  is 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  325 

the  sonnet  in  its  simplest  and  oldest  form — at  least,  the  old- 
est English  form,  for  the  early  foreign  form  was  more  elab- 
orate. We  have  sonnets  treating  about  bits  of  life  seen  in 
the  street,  about  the  meaning  of  religion,  about  the  nature 
of  God,  about  the  difficulty  of  being  good  in  this  world, 
about  pictures  seen  in  ancient  houses,  and  about  many  other 
things.  These  are  not  the  least  interesting  of  Arnold's  com- 
positions, and  I  want  to  quote  several  of  them.  Let  us  first 
take  one  which  has  a  bit  of  street  life  tor  its  subject.  I  re- 
member that  a  student  of  the  literature  class,  last  year, 
wrote  for  me  a  little  story  or  sketch  of  exactly  the  same 
experience,  though  I  am  tolerably  sure  that  he  never  read 
Matthew  Arnold's  "West  London."  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
\ou  will  observe  the  same  thing  in  Tokyo  or  in  any  part 
of  the  civilised  world,  exactly  as  the  poet  saw  it  in  London. 

Crouched  on  the  pavement,  close  by  Belgrave  Square, 

A  tramp  I  saw,  ill,  moody,  and  tongue-tied. 

A  babe  was  in  her  arms,  and  at  her  side 

A  girl ;  their  clothes  were  rags,  their  feet  were  bare. 

Some  labouring  men,  whose  work  lay  somewhere  there, 
Passed  opposite ;  she  touch'd  her  girl,  who  hied 
Across,  and  begg'd,  and  came  back  satisfied. 
The  rich  she  had  let  pass  with  frozen  stare. 

Thought  I :     "Above  her  state  this  spirit  towers ; 
She  will  not  ask  of  aliens,  but  of  friends. 
Of  sharers  in  a  common  human  fate. 

"She  turns  from  that  cold  succour,  which  attends 
The  unknown  little  from  the  unknowing  great. 
And  points  us  to  a  better  time  than  ours." 

By  "cold  succour"  the  poet  means  public  charity,  for  in 
London  there  are  hundreds  of  places  where  poor  people  can 
go  and  ask  for  food,  and  get  it  upon  certain  unpleasant  con- 
ditions. Thousands  of  rich  people  subscribe  for  such  pub- 
lic charities,  and  a  rich  person  usually  answer's  a  beggar's 


326  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

request  by  saying,  "Why  do  you  not  go  to  the  proper  place 
for  help?"  Poor  people  hate  public  charities,  for  many 
reasons.  But  the  main  truth  of  the  poem  is  the  fact  that 
suffering  makes  sympathy.  Rich  people  who  do  not  under- 
stand the  pain  of  hunger  and  cold  or  the  difficulty  of  liv- 
ing, do  not  pity  the  poor  in  most  cases;  they  refuse  to  give. 
On  the  other  hand  the  workingman,  the  poor  labourer,  knows 
what  pain  is,  and  little  as  he  has,  he  will  give  when  his 
heart  is  touched.  In  the  essay  written  for  me  last  year  the 
writer  said  that  he  had  seen  exactly  the  same  thing  on  the 
way  to  Ueno.  A  woman  with  a  little  boy  was  begging  on 
that  street,  and  she  asked  many  persons  to  help  her,  but 
the  only  one  who  gave  her  any  money  was  a  poor  carpenter 
on  his  way  home  after  a  hard  day's  work.  Why  does  Mat- 
thew Arnold  say  that  this  instinct  of  the  poor  to  ask  help 
from  the  poor  "points  us  to  a  better  time  than  ours'"?  Be- 
cause the  fact  in  itself  suggests  that  when  all  classes  of  men 
have  learned  what  suffering  is,  there  will  be  much  more 
sympathy  and  much  less  suffering.  If  the  rich  are  not  kind, 
it  is  often  because  they  do  not  know. 

Another  sonnet  on  the  difficulty  of  life  is  of  equal  inter- 
est. It  is  inspired  by  a  reading  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  Mar- 
cus Aurelius  was  the  most  virtuous  of  all  the  Roman 
Emperors,  although  living  at  an  age  when  the  people  were 
very  corrupt.  The  important  thing  to  know  about  him  in 
this  connection  is  that  he  wrote  a  beautiful  little  book  which 
has  been  translated  into  all  Western  languages,  and  which 
is  still  studied  by  everybody  who  loves  modern  philosophy. 
The  book  begins  with  a  history  of  the  Emperor's  own  life, 
from  boyhood;  then  follow  a  number  of  chapters  contain- 
ing his  thoughts  about  many  things,  but  especially  about 
morality,  the  gods,  and  the  future  life.  This  book  is  called 
"The  Thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius." 

Now,  this  emperor  found  it  very  difficult  to  be  as  good 
as  he  wished  to  be;  he  frankly  tells  us  that  in  a  very  high 
position  it  is  much  harder  to  be  good  than  in  a  very  humble 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  327 

position.  It  is  very  curious  to  read  what  he  says  about 
the  little  miseries  of  his  every  day  life,  about  the  pain  of 
having  to  meet  disagreeable  people  and  vicious  people  and 
ungrateful  people,  and  of  knowing  how  to  act  justly  with 
them.  But  he  adds,  "Even  in  a  palace  a  man  can  live  a 
good  life."  This  is  the  sentence  that  Matthew  Arnold 
writes  a  poem  about,  under  the  title  of  "Worldly  Place.'* 

Even  in  a  palace  life  may  be  led  well! 
So  spake  the  imperial  sage,  purest  of  men, 
Marcus  Aurelius.     But  the  stifling  den 
Of  common  life,  where,  crowded  up  pell-mell. 

Our  freedom  for  a  little  bread  we  sell, 
And  drudge  under  some  foolish  master's  ken 
Who  rates  us  if  we  peer  outside  our  pen — 
Match'd  with  a  palace,  is  not  this  a  hell? 

Even  in  a  palace!     On  his  truth  sincere. 
Who  spake  these  words,  no  shadow  ever  came ; 
And  when  my  ill-school'd  spirit  is  aflame 

Some  nobler,  ampler  stage  of  life  to  win, 

I'll  stop,  and  say :     "There  were  no  succour  here ! 

The  aids  to  noble  life  are  all  within." 

The  compact  language  may  be  paraphrased  as  follows: 
"What  a  strange  thing  to  say,  that  even  in  a  palace  a  man 
can  be  virtuous  I  Yet  the  man  who  said  it  was  himself  an 
emperor,  a  philosopher,  and  the  purest  of  men  in  his  own 
life.  Yet,  when  we  think  of  our  own  pain  and  trouble, 
how  difficult  it  is  for  us  to  believe  that  the  state  of  an  em- 
peror is  not  happier  than  the  state  of  a  common  man. 
Think  of  the  trouble  that  we  have  to  earn  a  living — obliged 
to  work  every  day  in  some  uncomfortable  position,  watched 
by  some  man  not  wiser  than  ourselves,  but  often  even  more 
foolish,  who  is  only  watching  our  work  in  order  to  find 
fault  with  us.  Surely  the  Emperor,  who  is  the  master  of 
all  men,  and  who  is  not  obliged  to  obey  anybody,  or  even 


328  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

obliged  to  do  anydiing  he  does  not  wish  to  do,  ought  to  be 
happier  than  we.  But  these  are  the  words  of  the  wisest 
and  noblest  of  the  Roman  emperors — 'Even  in  a  palace  I' 
Therefore  we  must  understand  that  it  is  still  harder  for  an 
emperor  to  be  good  and  happy  than  it  is  for  a  common 
man.  To  believe  this  may  be  difficult,  but  Marcus  Aure- 
lius  said  it,  and  in  his  whole  life  he  never  told  even  the 
shadow  of  a  lie.  I  believe  him.  When  I  feel  myself  dis- 
satisfied, when  I  wish  to  leave  the  work  that  I  now  do,  in 
order  to  obtain  a  higher  or  a  better  position,  I  remember 
the  words  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  The  secret  of  happiness 
and  the  power  of  virtue  are  in  our  hearts.  That  is  the 
meaning  of  life  as  it  was  understood  by  that  great  teacher 
and  great  emperor." 

So  excellently  does  this  poem  represent  the  moral  teach- 
ing of  Matthew  Arnold,  that  no  other  example  of  the  same 
kind  is  necessary.  You  will  see  the  same  idea  repeated  in 
hundreds  of  passages,  and  really  there  is  no  better  teaching. 
The  all-important  fact  to  know  in  the  first  place  is  the 
nature  of  duty;  when  we  know  this,  the  rules  of  conduct 
can  be  tolerably  well  understood  without  any  teaching  of 
creed  or  dogma.  On  this  subject  of  dogma,  Matthew 
Arnold  is  liberal  enough.  Nowhere  does  he  plainly  declare 
himself  a  Christian,  and  we  cannot  always  be  sure  of  the 
meaning  which  he  attaches  to  the  word  "God."  He  uses 
the  word  frequently  (so  does  Mr.  Swinburne,  who  does  not 
T^elieve  in  what  is  usually  understood  by  God)  ;  but  he  may 
use  it  in  a  signification  which  is  not  by  any  means  Christian, 
nor  even  religious  in  the  sectarian  sense.  Sometimes  God 
means  not  the  poet's  idea  of  the  Supreme  Unknown,  but 
the  idea  of  goodness  and  justice,  personified.  In  one  place 
we  have  a  plain  statement  of  sympathy  with  a  Christian 
definition,  but  you  must  not  suppose  this  sympathy  to  mean 
that  the  poet  accepts  the  definition  in  the  original  meaning. 
He  sympathises  with  it  only  because  it  symbolises  for  him 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  329 

a   truth   independent  of  any   religion.     The   statement  to 
which  I  refer  is  in  a  sonnet  entitled  "The  Divinity." 

"Yes,  write  it  in  the  rock,"  Saint  Bernard  said, 
Grave  it  on  brass  with  adamantine  pen ! 
'Tis  God  himself  becomes  apparent,  when 
God's  wisdom  and  God's  goodness  are  display'd, 

"For  God  of  these  his  attributes  is  made." — 
Well  spake  the  impetuous  Saint,  and  bore  of  men 
The  suffrage  captive ;  now,  not  one  in  ten 
Recalls  the  obscure  opposer  he  outweigh'd. 

God's  wisdom  and  God's  goodness! — Ay,  but  fools 
Mis-define  these  till  God  knows  them  no  more. 
Wisdom  and  goodness,  they  are  God! — what  schools 

Have  yet  so  much  as  heard  this  simple  lore  ? 
This  no  Saint  preaches,  and  this  no  Church  rules ; 
'Tis  in  the  desert,  now  and  heretofore. 

Saint  Bernard  was  a  great  church  reformer,  who  lived  in 
the  twelfth  century;  I  think  that  the  best  account  of  him 
is  that  which  we  find  in  Froude's  Essays.  The  incident 
which  Matthew  Arnold  mentions  happened  in  the  year 
1 148,  when  Bernard  was  accused  of  heresy  for  saying  that 
wisdom  and  goodness  were  God.  But  he  was  not  ashamed 
or  afraid  of  what  he  had  said,  and  he  argued  so  well  that 
he  silenced  his  accusers.  You  must  know  the  Church  of 
Rome  at  no  time  would  acknowledge  that  goodness  could 
exist  outside  faith;  in  other  words  a  person  could  not  be 
good  who  was  not  a  Christian,  according  to  mediaeval  opin- 
ion. No  matter  how  kind  or  how  generous  or  how  noble 
a  man  might  be,  unless  he  were  a  Christian  his  good  deeds 
could  not  save  him.  Therefore  it  seemed  to  many  people 
shocking  to  say  that  wisdom  and  goodness  were  identical 
with  divinity.  Matthew  Arnold's  thought  about  this  dec- 
laration is  that  it  is  really  true  from  a  modern  philosophical 


330  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

point  of  view.  Wisdom  is  divine,  goodness  is  divine. 
From  the  oldest  time  the  great  value  of  belief  in  God  has 
been  the  value  of  recognising  the  divine  nature  of  wisdom 
and  of  goodness.  I  think  Saint  Bernard  was  right,  says 
Matthew  Arnold,  when  he  called  these  God.  But  accord- 
ing to  sectarian  and  dogmatic  declarations,  what  are  wis- 
dom and  goodness?  Do  they  mean  the  highest  knowledge 
and  the  highest  morality?  No,  they  do  not.  Religious 
prejudice  calls  wisdom  what  is  not  wisdom,  and  goodness 
what  is  not  goodness.  If  we  should  take  the  highest  con- 
ception of  goodness  and  of  wisdom,  we  should  certainly  find 
these  to  be  divinity  in  the  deepest  and  grandest  meaning. 
But  to-day  there  is  nobody  in  the  churches  to  teach  such  a 
truth;  very  few  men  would  have  the  courage  to  utter  it. 
Therefore  the  voice  of  Saint  Bernard  is  still  a  voice  in  the 
desert,  a  voice  speaking  alone  in  the  great  ignorant  silence 
of  the  past  and  of  the  present.  If  mankind  ever  generally 
recognise  that  wisdom  and  goodness  are  divine,  they  will 
have  learned  the  best  that  any  religion  could  teach  them. 
There  is  something  in  this  little  poem  that  reminds  us  also 
of  Kenan,  who  said,  in  one  of  his  philosophical  dialogues, 
that  perhaps  there  is  no  God  existing  at  present,  but  that 
men  are  gradually  working  to  make  a  God,  and  that  out 
of  all  the  sorrow  and  the  labour  of  mankind,  a  God  will  be 
created  at  last.  Well,  this  God  of  the  French  philosopher, 
not  yet  made  but  in  process  of  being  made,  would  certainly 
be  the  same  God  suggested  by  Matthew  Arnold's  verses — 
infinite  goodness  and  infinite  knowledge. 

I  do  not  wish  to  keep  you  too  long  at  the  study  of  this 
grey,  colourless,  but  very  curious  poetry.  Still,  I  may  cite 
to  you  another  sonnet,  about  a  picture  which  Matthew 
Arnold  once  saw.  You  must  know  that  this  picture  really 
exists.  Long  ago  an  English  nobleman,  a  great  warrior 
and  great  statesman,  very  brave  but  also  very  proud  and 
positive  in  his  character,  became  angry  one  day  with  his 
little  son,  a  boy  of  six  or  seven  years  old,  and  thoughtlessly 


]VIATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET  331 

struck  him.  Perhaps  a  man  would  scarcely  have  been 
pained  by  the  blow,  but  a  child's  brain  and  body  are  very 
delicate  things,  and  the  shock  of  the  blow  destroyed  the 
little  brain.  The  child  never  again  knew  anything;  he 
was  without  any  remembrance  even  of  what  had  happened; 
he  could  not  even  understand  why  his  father  asked  for 
pardon.  In  order  to  punish  himself,  the  father  had  a  great 
picture  painted  of  the  cruel  act  which  he  had  committed, 
so  that  all  the  world  might  know  his  own  shame  and  sorrow. 
This  picture  still  hangs  in  the  Abbey  at  Newstead. 

I  presume  you  remember  that  Newstead  Abbey  was  the 
residence  and  property  of  Lord  Byron.  Because  of  his 
great  memory,  Newstead  Abbey  has  long  been  a  place  of 
literary  pilgrimage,  strangers  from  all  parts  of  the  world 
making  visits  there  in  order  to  see  the  relics  of  the  great 
poet.  It  was  while  upon  such  a  visit  that  Matthew 
Arnold  saw  this  picture,  and  wrote  the  following  sonnet 
about  it: 

What  made  my  heart,  at  Newstead,  fullest  swell  ? — 
'Twas  not  the  thought  of  Byron,  of  his  cry 
Stormily  sweet,  his  Titan-agony; 
It  was  the  sight  of  that  Lord  Arundel 

Who  struck,  in  heat,  his  child  he  loved  so  well, 
And  his  child's  reason  flicker'd,  and  did  die. 
Painted  (he  will'd  it)  in  the  gallery 
They  hang;  the  picture  doth  the  story  tell. 

Behold  the  stern,  mail'd  father,  staff  in  hand ! 
The  little  fair-hair'd  son,  with  vacant  gaze, 
Where  no  more  lights  of  sense  or  knowledge  are ! 

Methinks  the  woe,  which  made  that  father  stand 
Baring  his  dumb  remorse  to  future  days. 
Was  woe  than  Byron's  woe  more  tragic  far. 

I  do  not  know  any  poem  more  painful  than  this  in  mod- 
ern literature,  and  scarcely  any  equally  touching — perhaps 


332  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET 

Coventry  Patmore's  poem  "The  Toys"  comes  nearest  to  it 
in  the  latter  quality.  And  yet  how  very  simply  the  thing 
is  told! 

My  purpose  in  this  lecture  has  been  to  make  you  inter- 
ested in  those  parts  of  Matthew  Arnold's  work  which  are 
least  known  to  the  general  reader.  School  text  books  and 
anthologies  contain  plenty  of  extracts  from  Arnold,  but  no 
extracts  which  really  give  you  any  idea  of  the  thought  and 
the  feelings  of  the  man.  Such  extracts  are  usually  chosen 
because  of  the  beauty  of  the  verse,  and  they  are  therefore 
chosen  usually  from  those  longer  poems  in  which  Arnold 
shows  himself  a  student  of  Milton,  as  in  "Thyrsis,"  or  a 
student  of  the  Greek  tragedians,  as  in  "Merope."  You 
will  also  find  quotations  made  from  "Sohrab  and  Rustum," 
one  of  which  is  so  famous  that  it  is  quoted  in  hundreds  of 
books — I  mean  the  passage  about  the  Chinese  porcelain 
maker.  But  these  would  not  at  all  serve  the  object  which 
I  had  in  view — namely,  to  make  you  see  the  great,  sad, 
tender  mind  of  the  man.  This  you  will  learn  only  by  read- 
ing and  liking  those  shorter  pieces,  such  as  I  have  quoted, 
which  are  a  little  difficult  to  study,  but  which  repay  study 
much  better  than  the  most  of  the  poet's  more  ambitious 
work.  In  writing  these  he  probably  did  not  intend  or 
expect  to  appear  as  a  great  poet,  yet  it  is  here  indeed  that 
the  great  poet  is,  rather  than  in  even  such  beautiful  lines 
as  the  following: 

Then,  with  weak  hasty  fingers,  Sohrab  loosed 
His  belt,  and  near  the  shoulder  bared  his  arm, 
And  showed  a  sign  in  faint  vermilion  points 
Prick'd ;  as  a  cunning  workman,  in  Pekin, 
Pricks  with  vermilion  some  clear  porcelain  vase, 
An  emperor's  gift — at  early  morn  he  paints, 
And  all  day  long,  and  when  night  comes,  the  lamp 
Lights  up  his  studious  forehead  and  thin  hands. 

Milton  might  have  written  that,  it  is  so  truly  beautiful. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AS  POET       333 

But  it  is  not  characteristic  of  Matthew  Arnold  otherwise 
than  by  being  in  the  style  of  Milton.  The  imitation  of  a 
great  poet  may  be  admirable,  but  original  thought  always 
proves  in  the  end  to  be  the  supreme  test  of  poetical  value. 


CHAPTER  IX 
A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

As  the  term  is  drawing  to  a  close,  so  that  we  shall  have 
only  two  or  three  more  days  together,  I  have  thought  it 
better,  having  completed  the  last  lecture,  not  to  begin  a 
new  lecture  upon  the  same  scale,  but  to  give  a  short  lecture 
about  some  single  famous  poem.  And  I  have  chosen  for 
this  purpose  Jean  Ingelow's  famous  poem,  "The  High  Tide 
on  the  Coast  of  Lincolnshire."  Sometimes  a  poet  becomes 
celebrated  by  the  writing  of  one  poem  only.  This  happens 
to  be  the  case  with  Miss  Ingelow.  She  wrote  several  vol- 
umes of  poems  which  were  very  popular  in  England  and 
even  in  America.  But  popularity,  during  the  lifetime  of  a 
writer,  is  no  proof  of  literary  merit;  and  it  was  not  so  in 
Miss  Ingelow's  case.  She  really  wrote  only  one  great 
poem;  and  by  that  one  poem  her  name  will  always  be  pre- 
served in  the  history  of  English  literature. 

The  subject  of  this  poem  ought  to  interest  you.  The 
subject  is  only  too  familiar  in  Japan — a  tidal  wave 
{^tsunami).  There  are  few  more  terrible  things  possible 
for  man  to  endure,  in  the  form  of  what  are  called  "natural 
visitations,"  than  earthquakes  and  tidal  waves.  These  two 
dreadful  forms  of  calamity  have  been  more  common  in  this 
countr)^  than  in  Europe;  but  Europe  has  not  been  entirely 
exempt  from  them.  There  is  only  one  other  kind  of  natu- 
ral calamity  which  can  be  at  all  compared  with  them — a 
volcanic  eruption.  But  it  is  seldom  indeed  that  a  volcanic 
eruption,  in  any  civilised  country,  produces  such  destruction 
of  life  as  may  be  caused  by  an  earthquake  or  a  tidal  wave. 

It  is  about  three  hundred  years  since  England  had  a  great 
cataclysm  of  this  sort;  and  it  has  never  been  forgotten  by 
the  people  of  the  coast  where  it  happened.     That  coast 

334 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

happens  to  be  quite  low.  At  one  time,  indeed,  it  was  little 
better  than  a  great  salt-marsh.  But  several  miles  inland 
there  was  very  good  farm-land,  and  plenty  of  farms  and 
towns  and  villages.  Miss  Ingelow  herself  lived  very  near 
the  scene  of  her  poem.  You  must  imagine  a  river  flowing 
through  the  low  country,  widening  very  much  toward  the 
mouth — the  river  Lindis ;  Boston  town  stands  near  the  bank. 
When  the  tidal  wave  came,  the  immediate  effect  was  to 
force  the  river  back,  so  that  even  distant  parts  of  the  coun- 
try which  the  sea  could  not  reach  were  flooded  by  the  river. 
There  is  only  one  more  thing  to  tell  you  about  the  poem — 
that  it  is  written  in  English  of  the  sixteenth  century,  yet 
there  are  only  two  or  three  queer  words  in  it;  everything  is 
easy  to  understand.  The  verses  are  of  different  form  and 
the  stanzas  of  irregular  length. 

The  old  mayor  climbed  the  belfry-tower, 
The  ringers  ran  by  two,  by  three ; 
"Pull,  if  ye  never  pulled  before  ; 
Good  ringers,  pull  your  best,"  quoth  he. 
"Play  uppe,  play  uppe,  O  Boston  bells ! 
Ply  all  your  changes,  all  your  swells. 

Play  uppe  'The  Brides  of  Enderby.'  " 

The  church  tower  of  St,  Botolph's,  which  still  stands,  is 
the  belfry-tower  here  referred  to.  That  was  long  before 
the  time  of  telegraphs  and  railroads,  and  the  only  way  of 
quickly  sending  news  of  danger  through  the  country  used 
to  be  to  ring  the  great  bells  of  the  churches.  It  was  there- 
fore very  important  to  have  good  bells;  and  every  great 
church  had  a  number  of  them,  all  of  different  sizes,  so  ar- 
ranged that  different  tunes  could  be  played  upon  them. 
You  can  still  hear  this  kind  of  ringing  in  many  parts  of  Eu- 
rope. The  tunes  are  usually  very  simple  tunes  known  to 
all  the  people,  and  commonly  hymn  tunes,  but  not  always. 
In  time  of  danger  it  was  agreed  that  particular  tunes  should 
be  played.     In  the  district  of  Lincolnshire,  the  tune  that 


336  A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

meant  danger  was  the  tune  of  an  old  ballad,  called  "The 
Brides  of  Enderby,"  and  when  people  heard  the  church 
bells  play  it  they  knew  that  something  terrible  was  going 
to  happen.  I  believe  you  know  it  requires  a  number  of 
men  to  ring  the  bells  in  this  way ;  and  it  used  to  be  a  regular 
calling.  The  word  "changes"  in  the  sixth  line  means  varia- 
tion in  the  modern  musical  sense;  the  word  "swells"  refers 
to  a  particular  way  of  ringing  two  or  more  bells  together, 
so  that  the  sounds  of  all  would  blend  into  one  great  wave 
of  tone. 

You  must  understand  that  the  whole  story  is  being  told 
by  an  old  grandmother;  she  relates  everything  as  she  saw 
it  and  felt  it,  in  a  simple  and  touching  way. 

Men  say  it  was  a  stolen  tyde — 
The  Lord  that  sent  it,  He  knows  all ; 
But  in  myne  ears  doth  still  abide 
The  message  that  the  bells  let  fall  : 
And  there  was  naught  of  strange,  beside 
The  flights  of  mews  and  peewits  pied 
By  millions  crouched  on  the  old  sea  wall. 

I  sat  and  spun  within  the  doore, 

My  thread  brake  off,  I  raised  myne  eyes; 

The  level  sun,  like  ruddy  ore, 

Lay  sinking  in  the  barren  skies ; 

And  dark  against  day's  golden  death 

She  moved  where  Lindis  wandereth, 

My  Sonne's  faire  wife,  Elizabeth. 

"Cusha !     Cusha !     Cusha,"  calling, 
Ere  the  early  dews  were  falling, 
Farre  away  I  heard  her  song. 
"Cusha !     Cusha  !"  all  along ; 
Where  the  reedy  Lindis  floweth, 

Floweth,  floweth. 
From  the  meads  where  melick  groweth 
Faintly  came  her  milking  song — 

"Cusha  !     Cusha  !     Cusha  !"  calling, 
"For  the  dews  will  soone  be  falling; 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW  337 

Leave  your  meadow  grasses  mellow, 

Mellow,  mellow. 
Quit  your  cow-slips,  cow-slips  yellow ; 
Come  uppe  Whitef oot,  come  uppe  Lightfoot ; 
Quit  the  stalks  of  parsely  hollow. 

Hollow,  hollow, 
Come  uppe  Jetty,  rise  and  follow. 
From  the  clovers  lift  your  head ; 
Come  uppe  Whitefoot,  come  uppe  Lightfoot 
Come  uppe  Jetty,  rise  and  follow, 
Jetty,  to  the  milking  shed." 

The  expression  "stolen  tide"  in  the  first  stanza  is  strange 
to  you,  I  think;  it  is  strange  even  to  English  readers  who 
are  not  aware  that  country-folk  often  use  the  word  "stolen" 
in  the  sense  of  contrary  to  nature,  monstrous,  magical. 
Now  you  have  the  old  grandmother  talking  to  you,  recall- 
ing her  memories.  She  tells  you  that  upon  the  evening  of 
the  great  tidal  wave,  the  first  thing  that  startled  her  was 
the  sound  of  the  church  bells  signalling  danger.  It  startled 
her  so  that  she  broke  the  thread  which  she  was  spinning  at 
the  door;  then  she  looked  up  to  see  if  there  was  anything 
unusual  in  sky  or  field.  Nothing  in  the  sky;  it  was  what 
she  called  "a  barren  sky" — that  is,  a  sky  without  a  single 
cloud;  and  the  sun  was  sinking  beautifully,  making  all  the 
West  full  of  gold  light.  Nothing  in  the  field — no,  but 
what  was  that  upon  the  sea-wall*?  Of  course  )^ou  know 
what  a  sea-wall  is;  they  are  very  common  in  Japan,  built 
to  protect  fishing  villages  or  low  coasts  against  the  surf  of 
heavy  storms.  Yes;  there  was  something  strange  on  the 
sea-wall;  millions  of  sea-birds  were  crowded  there — white 
gulls,  and  parti-coloured  gulls,  called  peewits  from  their  mel- 
ancholy cry.  The  danger  was  probably  from  the  sea — but 
what  was  it*?  While  wondering  what  it  could  be,  the  old 
woman  heard  her  son's  wife  singing  to  the  cows.  I  am 
not  sure  whether  you  know  about  this  custom.  Milk-cows, 
in  England,  are  left  all  day  to  graze  in  the  meadows,  when 
the  weather  is  fine;  and  at  evening  they  are  called  home, 


B38  A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

milked,  and  put  in  their  stables.  The  men  or  boys  who 
take  care  of  them,  or  the  girls — dairymaids  as  they  are 
termed — often  sing  a  kind  of  song  to  call  the  animals  home ; 
they  come  at  once  when  they  hear  the  song.  Names  are 
given  to  them,  usually  names  indicating  the  appearance  of 
the  cow,  or  something  peculiar  about  it.  In  this  song,  the 
name  Whitefoot  probably  means  a  red  or  a  black  cow  with 
pure  white  feet.  The  name  Lightfoot  might  mean  a  thor- 
oughbred cow — that  is,  a  cow  of  very  fine  race — with  a 
particularly  light  quick  walk.  The  name  Jetty  probably 
refers  to  a  perfectly  black  cow,  black  as  jet.  There  is 
nothing  else  to  explain,  except  the  queer  old  word  "melick," 
the  name  of  a  particular  kind  of  grass.  "Cow-slips"  are, 
you  know,  long  yellow  flowers,  very  common  in  European 

fields. 

If  it  be  long,  ay,  long  ago> 

When  I  beginne  to  think  howe  long, 

Againe  I  hear  the  Lindis  flow, 

Swift  as  an  arrowe,  sharpe  and  strong; 

And  all  the  aire,  it  seemeth  me, 

Bin  full  of  floating  bells   (sayth  shee), 

That  ring  the  tune  of  Enderby. 

AUe  fresh  the  level  pasture  lay, 
And  not  a  shadowe  mote  be  seene, 
Save  where  full  fyve  good  miles  away 
The  steeple  towered  from  out  the  greenc. 
And  lo!  the  great  bell  farre  and  wide 
Was  heard  in  all  the  country  side 
That  Saturday  at  eventide. 

The  swanherds  where  their  sedges  are 
Moved  on  in  sunset's  golden  breath, 
The  shepherde  lads  I  heard  afarre, 
And  my  Sonne's  wife,  Elizabeth; 
Till  floating  o'er  the  grassy  sea 
Came  downe  that  kyndly  message  free. 
The  "Brides  of  Mavis  Enderby." 

Then  some  looked  uppe  into  the  sky, 
And  all  along  where  Lindis  flows 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW  339 

To  where  the  goodly  vessels  lie, 
And  where  the  lordly  steeple  shows. 
They  sayde,  "And  why  should  this  thing  be  ? 
What  danger  lowers  by  land  or  sea? 
They  ring  the  tune  of  Enderby  I 

"For  evil  news  from  Mablethorpe, 
Of  pyrate  galleys  warping  downe; 
For  shippes  ashore  beyond  the  scorpe, 
They  have  not  spared  to  wake  the  towne : 
But  while  the  west  bin  red  to  see, 
And  storms  be  none,  and  pyrates  flee, 
Why  ring  'The  Brides  of  Enderby'?" 

The  conditional  mood  at  the  beginning  of  the  first  of  the 
stanzas  just  quoted,  is  only  suggested;  there  is  no  sequence, 
no  main  clause.  You  must  understand  the  meaning  to  be 
something  like  this:  "You  ask  me  if  it  was  long  ago.  If 
it  was  long  ago  I  Ah,  perhaps,  it  was  long  ago — yet  when 
I  try  to  think  how  long  ago  it  was,  I  see  and  hear  every- 
thing so  plainly  that  it  seems  to  me  even  now."  In  the 
fourth  line,  the  adjectives  "sharp  and  strong"  refer,  of 
course,  to  the  arrow — a  heavy  war-arrow  would  fly  much 
faster  and  with  a  louder  sound  than  the  sporting  arrow. 
Archery  was  still  kept  up  in  the  sixteenth  century.  But 
the  old  woman  is  not  thinking  only  of  the  arrow;  she  is 
thinking  of  the  sound  made  by  the  strong  current  of  the 
river.  It  had  a  sharp  sound,  she  tells  us,  like  the  sound 
of  a  heavy  arrow.  Notice  in  the  sixth  line  the  use  of  "bin" 
for  "is."  In  the  following  stanza,  you  need  only  observe 
the  curious  old  perfect  "mote"  used  where  we  would  now 
say  "might"  or  "could."  In  the  third  line,  you  will  find 
the  term  "good  miles."  Why  should  people  speak  of  a 
good  mile  or  a  good  distance?  In  such  places  the  word 
"good"  has  the  sense  of  "at  least,"  "fully,"  "not  less  than." 

The  description  goes  on  very  vividly;  after  speaking  of 
the  beautiful  clear  weather,  with  nothing  in  all  the  level 
of  the  flat  country  to  break  the  skyline,  except  the  far-away 


340  A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

shape  of  the  church  steeple,  the  old  woman  speaks  of  the 
swans  in  the  high  river  grass,  the  shouting  of  the  shepherd 
boys,  calling  home  their  sheep,  and  the  sweet  song  of  the 
young  wife  waiting  to  milk  the  cows  as  they  return  from 
pasture.  There  was  nothing  at  all  of  danger  visible;  and 
the  peasants  wondered  why  the  bells  sounded  danger.  Ob- 
serve in  the  fourth  of  this  group  of  stanzas  the  use  of  the 
word  "lowers"  in  the  sixth  line.  To-day  we  more  com- 
monly spell  it  "lour" — though  originally  the  meaning  was 
very  much  the  same.  When  clouds  hang  down  very  low, 
it  is  a  sign  of  storm;  when  brows  are  lowered  in  a  frown 
it  is  a  sign  of  anger.  So  when  we  speak  of  a  lowering  sky 
we  mean  a  threatening  sky;  but  however  we  spell  the  word, 
we  pronounce  it  with  a  very  full  sound  of  "ow"  in  the 
sense  of  "to  threaten."  "What  danger  is  threatening  us 
from  the  land  or  from  the  sea'?"  That  is  what  the  people 
ask  each  other.  Why  do  they  ring  the  bells  in  that  way*? 
If  pirates  had  attacked  the  neighbouring  port  of  Mable- 
thorpe,  or  if  there  were  any  ships  wrecked  beyond  the  rock- 
line  (scorpe),  then  there  would  be  some  reason  for  calling 
up  all  the  people.  The  expression  "wake"  the  town,  does 
not  mean  to  awaken,  but  to  summon,  to  call.  This  is  a 
quaint  idiom. 

Very  suddenly,  though,  the  old  grandmother  learns  what 
the  danger  is: 

I  looked  without,  and  lo !  my  sonne 

Came  riding  downe  with  might  and  main ! 

He  raised  a  shout  as  he  drew  on, 

Till  all  the  welkin  rang  again, 

"Elizabeth !     Elizabeth !" 

(A  sweeter  woman  ne'er  drew  breath 

Than  my  Sonne's  wife,  Elizabeth.) 

"The  olde  sea-wall  (he  cried)  is  downe, 
The  rising  tide  comes  on  apace, 
And  boats  adrift  in  yonder  towne 
Go  sailing  uppe  the  market-place." 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW  341 

He  shook  as  one  that  looks  on  death : 
"God  save  you,  mother!"  straight  he  saith; 
"Where  is  my  wife,  Elizabeth?" 

"Good  Sonne,  where  Lindis  winds  away. 
With  her  two  bairns  I  marked  her  long ; 
And  ere  yon  bells  beganne  to  play 
Afar  I  heard  her  milking  song." 
He  looked  across  the  grassy  lea, 
To  right,  to  left,  "Ho  Enderby !" 
They  rang  "The  Brides  of  Enderby!" 

With  that  he  cried  and  beat  his  breast ; 
For,  lo!  along  the  river's  bed 
A  mighty  eygre  reared  his  crest. 
And  uppe  the  Lindis  raging  sped. 
It  swept  with  thunderous  noises  loud ; 
Shaped  like  a  curling  snow-white  cloud, 
Or  like  a  demon  in  a  shroud. 

In  the  fourth  line  of  the  first  of  the  above  stanzas  oc- 
curs the  word  "welkin,"  much  less  often  used  now  than 
formerly.  It  most  commonly  signifies  the  sky,  the  vault 
of  heaven.  But  we  may  often  understand  the  word  merely 
in  the  sense  of  atmosphere,  the  whole  expanse  of  blue  air. 
Indeed  the  word  chiefly  lingers  in  modern  use  in  this  mean- 
ing, as  is  illustrated  by  the  common  idiom  "to  make  the 
welkin  ring,"  This  simply  means  to  make  all  the  air 
shake,  and  resound  with  a  noise  or  a  shout.  It  is  thus 
that  the  word  is  used  in  the  present  poem. 

In  the  following  stanza  observe  the  word  "apace" — it 
is  now  very  old-fashioned.  The  meaning  is  "very  quickly" 
or  "suddenly" — so  that  it  does  not  at  all  appear  to  be  what 
it  means.  We  are  apt  to  think  of  the  verb  "to  pace," 
meaning  to  walk  slowly  with  full  strides;  but  apace  is 
exactly  the  contrary  of  slowly.  In  the  next  stanza  the 
word  "bairns,"  meaning  young  children,  is  familiar  to  any- 
body acquainted  with  Scotch  dialect;  and  we  have  got 
accustomed  to  think  of  the  word  as  purely  Scotch.     But 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

it  is  not:  it  is  very  old  English,  and  is  much  used  in  the 
provinces  outside  of  Scotland.  In  the  next  stanza  we 
find  an  especially  curious  and  very  ancient  word,  "eygre." 
This  word  can  be  found  in  the  most  ancient  Anglo-Saxon 
poems,  and  it  still  lingers  in  various  English  provincial  dia- 
lects. But  it  is  not  often  spelt  in  this  way;  the  common 
spelling  is  "eagre."  It  means  an  immense  wave  or  billow; 
and  it  has  a  very  weird  effect  in  this  stanza.  For  it  is  the 
real  tidal  wave  that  the  old  woman  describes  by  that 
terrible  word.  All  the  flood  that  had  come  before  was 
only  the  precursor  of  the  great  sea  rising  to  follow.  Now 
it  comes  roaring  up  the  river,  with  a  sound  of  thunder — 
all  black  below,  all  white  above  with  foam,  so  that  it 
suggests  to  the  old  grandmother's  terrified  fancy  the  idea 
of  a  great  black  demon  moving  with  a  funeral  shroud 
thrown  over  his  head.  You  must  understand  that  she  sees 
the  wave  at  an  angle,  not  in  front.  Now  comes  an  excel- 
lent description  of  the  immediate  result  of  the  wave. 

And  rearing  Lindis  backward  pressed, 
Shook  all  her  trembling  bankes  amaine ; 
Then  madly  at  the  eygre's  breast 
Flung  uppe  her  weltering  walls  again, 
Then  bankes  came  downe  with  ruin  and  rout — 
Then  beaten  foam  flew  round  about — 
Then  all  the  mighty  floods  were  out. 

So  far,  so  fast,  the  eygre  drave, 
The  heart  had  hardly  time  to  beat, 
Before  a  shallow  seething  wave 
Sobbed  in  the  grasses  at  oure  feet: 
The  feet  had  hardly  time  to  flee 
Before  it  brake  against  the  knee, 
And  all  the  world  was  in  the  sea. 

You  must  understand  that  the  Lindis  River  flowing 
through  a  very  low  country,  constantly  liable  to  inunda- 
tion, has  to  be  confined  between  artificial  banks  to  pro- 
vide  against   accidents.     In  England  there  are  but  very 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW  343 

few  rivers  to  which  it  has  been  found  necessary  to  fur- 
nish artificial  banks ;  but  in  America  many  great  rivers  have 
to  be  thus  banked  for  immense  distances.  For  instance,  the 
great  Mississippi  River  flows  between  artificial  banks  for 
a  distance  of  many  hundreds  of  miles;  and  when  you  read 
of  terrible  floods  in  the  Southern  States,  it  generally  means 
that  the  banks  have  been  somewhere  broken.  These  banks 
rise  much  above  the  surrounding  country,  like  great  walls. 
So  it  was  in  the  landscape  of  the  present  poem — the  river 
was  flowing  between  high  banks  like  walls.  When  the 
great  wave  came  from  the  sea,  moving  at  a  tremendous 
speed,  the  first  effect  was  to  check  and  throw  back  the 
river  current;  and  this  made  a  great  counter  wave.  But 
the  counter  wave  could  not  resist  the  pressure  of  a  sea  wave; 
and  the  consequence  was  that  the  whole  force  of  the  river 
was  diverted  sidewards,  with  the  result  that  the  banks 
were  at  once  broken  to  pieces.  That  caused  an  immediate 
inundation  of  fresh  water;  but  the  fresh  water  inundation 
was  almost  instantly  followed  by  the  rush  of  the  sea,  a 
much  more  dangerous  and  terrible  affair. 

In  the  fourth  line  of  the  stanza  about  the  rising  of  the 
river,  you  must  understand  the  word  "weltering"  to  have 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "liquid";  and  the  term  "welter- 
ing walls"  to  signify  only  high  waves  rising  like  walls  in 
vain  opposition  to  the  mighty  tidal  wave.  In  the  stanza 
following,  the  term  "shallow  seething  wave"  refers  to  the 
first  burst  of  the  fresh  water  over  the  country;  but  the 
last  three  lines  of  the  same  stanza  refer  to  the  rush  of 
the  sea  following  after.  Before  a  person  had  time  even 
to  move,  the  water  was  up  to  his  knees;  the  next  minute 
it  was  high  enough  to  cover  the  greater  part  of  the  houses. 

Upon  the  roofe  we  sate  that  night, 

The  noise  of  bells  went  sweeping  by ; 

I  marked  the  lofty  beacon  light 

Stream  from  the  church  tower,  red  and  high — 

A  lurid  mark  and  dread  to  see; 


844>  A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

And  awsome  bells  they  were  to  me, 
That  in  the  dark  rang  "Enderby." 

They  rang  the  sailor  lads  to  guide 
From  roof e  to  roof e  who  fearless  rowed ; 
And  I — my  sonne  was  at  my  side, 
And  yet  the  ruddy  beacon  glowed ; 
And  yet  he  moaned  beneath  his  breath, 
"O  come  in  life,  or  come  in  death  I 
O  lost!  my  love,  Elizabeth!" 

Some  of  the  houses,  of  two  or  three  stories  and  strongly 
built,  withstood  the  flood  for  a  time,  and  people  took  refuge 
upon  the  roofs.  Then  from  the  neighbouring  port  sailors 
came  with  boats,  and  went  from  roof  to  roof,  to  take  the 
people  away.  The  phrase  "sailor-lads"  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  sailor  boys  or  young  sailors,  though  the  Eng- 
lish "lad"  strictly  means  a  person  between  the  ages  of  boy- 
hood and  of  manhood — let  us  say  from  sixteen  to  twenty- 
one.  That  is  the  strict  meaning;  but  for  a  very  long  time 
this  word  had  a  caressing  meaning,  when  it  is  attached  to 
another  word  so  as  to  make  such  compounds,  as  for  ex- 
ample, soldier-lads,  sailor-lads.  In  these  instances  the  word 
"lad"  has  a  meaning  something  like  "dear"  or  "good."  The 
beacon  fire,  lighted  upon  the  top  of  a  church  tower,  is  de- 
scribed as  "lurid."  This  word  "lurid"  has  somewhat 
changed  its  meaning  in  modern  times.  It  is  from  the  Latin, 
and  the  Latin  meaning  was  a  dim  green  or  a  very  dim  yel- 
low. The  idea  suggested  by  the  Latin  word  was  the  gloomy 
light  in  a  deep  forest,  or  the  indistinct  light  in  a  time  of 
eclipse.  But  modern  writers  have  used  it  a  great  deal, 
and  somewhat  incorrectly,  in  the  signification  of  red  light 
— light  having  an  awful  colour;  for  the  ancient  word  al- 
ways conveyed  some  idea  of  fear,  and  this  idea  has  never 
been  lost  in  English.  Whenever  you  see  in  literature  some- 
thing described  as  lurid,  you  may  be  sure  that  the  meaning 
is  a  terrible  and  unnatural  light.  Of  course  the  church 
tower,  used  for  a  beacon  light,  had  a  square  flat  roof.     As 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW  345 

a  matter  of  fact,  when  we  see  the  word  "church  tower"  used 
in  English,  a  flat-topped  tower  is  meant;  the  pointed  form 
being  more  correctly  indicated  by  the  word  "spire." 

So  much  for  the  scene  described — the  tragedy  continues 
with  the  lamentation  of  the  sorrowing  husband  for  his  lost 
wife  and  children.  He  asks  her  to  come  to  him  alive  or 
dead,  so  that  he  may  at  least  know  what  has  become  of 
her  in  that  awful  night.  If  you  think  a  moment  about  the 
matter,  you  will  see  that  the  expression  is  quite  natural; 
people  usually  almost  expect  that  those  whom  they  loved 
will  give  them  some  signs  in  case  of  sudden  death — such 
as  a  visit  in  dreams,  or  an  apparitional  visit.  In  this  case 
the  wife  comes  to  her  husband  dead,  but  not  as  a  ghost : 

And  didst  thou  visit  him  no  more? 

Thou  didst,  thou  didst,  my  daughter  deare; 

The  waters  laid  thee  at  his  doore. 

Ere  yet  the  early  dawn  was  clear. 

Thy  pretty  bairns  in  fast  embrace, 

The  lifted  sun  shone  on  thy  face, 

Downe  drifted  to  thy  dwelling-place. 

Many  poets  have  used  this  fancy,  in  poetry  about  death 
by  drowning,  and  perhaps  the  idea  first  came  into  superior 
poetry  with  the  study  of  the  popular  ballads.  In  many 
English  ballads  we  read  about  the  corpse  of  a  mother  and 
a  child  being  carried  by  some  flood  or  storm  to  the  door 
of  the  husband;  sometimes  the  floating  body  which  thus  re- 
turns is  that  of  a  betrayed  girl.  The  idea  is  artistically 
excellent,  because  it  is  so  natural  that  no  amount  of  use 
can  wear  it  out.  It  was  a  favourite  incident  with  Ros- 
setti.     The  narrative  continues,  with  certain  reflections: 

That  flow  strewed  wrecks  about  the  grass, 
That  ebbe  swept  out  the  flocks  to  sea ; 
A  fatal  ebbe  and  flow,  alas ! 
To  manye  more  than  myne  and  me ; 
But  each  will  mourn  his  own  (she  saith). 


346  A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

And  sweeter  woman  ne'er  drew  breath 
Than  my  Sonne's  wife,  Elizabeth. 

In  this  stanza  you  must  understand  that  the  word  "flow" 
means  the  incoming  tide,  as  ebb  means  the  outgoing  tide, 
though  the  use  of  the  word  "flow,"  all  by  itself,  in  the  first 
line  is  a  little  unusual.  The  fifth  line  is  the  line  to  which 
I  particularly  wish  to  call  your  attention  : 

But  each  will  mourn  his  own. 

This  line,  simple  as  any  commonplace,  simple  as  the  most 
trite  of  household  phrases,  is  nevertheless,  by  reason  of  its 
opportune  use  in  this  place,  a  very  fine  bit  of  human  poetry. 
The  old  grandmother  remembers  and  relates  the  great  de- 
struction of  life,  both  of  animals  and  human  beings;  and 
in  the  recollection  of  that  immense  calamity,  with  the  vision 
of  a  thousand  past  sorrows  before  her,  she  suddenly  feels 
like  reproaching  herself  for  talking  so  much  about  her  own 
particular  grief.  She  apologises  for  this  involuntary  self- 
ishness by  citing  the  old  saying  that  each  person  feels  his 
or  her  own  sorrow  most;  "each  will  mourn  his  own";  per- 
haps it  is  bad,  yet  who  can  help  it,  and  who  can  fail  to  find 
a  kindly  excuse  for  it? 

Really  that  is  almost  the  best  line  in  the  poem;  and  I 
want  to  talk  about  it,  because  it  suggests  so  many  things. 
It  is  quite  true  that  each  person  best  understands  sorrow 
or  joy  by  his  or  her  sorrow  and  joy;  and  in  a  certain  way, 
a  person  is  not  wrong  in  imagining  his  joy  or  pain  to  be  the 
greatest  joy  or  the  greatest  pain  in  the  whole  world.  There 
are  many  proverbial  sayings,  quoted  in  opposition  to  the 
indulgence  of  personal  feeling;  I  suppose  that  they  really 
serve  a  good  purpose  by  checking  a  tendency  to  over-ef- 
fusiveness. For  example,  you  have  heard  many  sayings 
about  the  admiration  of  a  mother  for  her  child,  to  the  effect 
that  every  mother  thinks  her  own  child  to  be  the  very  best 


A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW  347 

child  alive.  So  a  son  invariably  thinks  that  his  own  mother 
is  the  best  of  all  mothers ;  he  may  not  say  so,  but  he  is  very 
likely  to  think  so.  And  there  are  household  phrases  re- 
lating to  a  corresponding  feeling  on  the  part  of  brother 
and  sister,  husband  and  wife,  father  and  son.  The  tendency 
to  laugh  at  or  to  repress  expressions  of  such  innocent  feel- 
ing certainly  have  their  special  use:  we  must  so  think  of 
them.  But  most  people  utter  the  mockery,  and  there  stop 
— without  asking  themselves  anything  about  the  reason 
and  about  the  truth  of  such  feeling.  After  all,  there  is  a 
great  deal  of  truth  in  it.  The  value  of  an  affection,  the 
value  of  a  personality,  to  each  of  us  is  quite  special.  The 
son  who  thinks  of  his  mother  as  the  best  of  all  mothers 
thinks  quite  truly  so  far  as  the  relation  of  that  mother  to 
himself  is  concerned.  She  is  the  best  of  all  mothers  for 
him;  and  no  human  being  could  ever  take  her  place.  So 
with  the  relation  of  the  child  to  the  parent.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion of  relativity.  Everybody  feels  this — though  it  is  not 
easily  expressed  by  simple  minds,  which  can  only  think  as 
the  old  grandmother  thinks  in  the  story,  that  each  one  can- 
not help  "mourning  his  own,"  and  faintly  justify  by  an 
appeal  to  universal  experience,  the  declaration  that  no  one 
could  be  sweeter  or  better  than  the  one  who  has  been  lost. 
The  poem  concludes  with  the  memories  of  the  song  and 
the  singer: 

I  shall  never  hear  her  more 
By  the  reedy  Lindis  shore, 
"Cusha  !     Cusha !     Cusha  !"  calling, 
Ere  the  early  dews  be  falling; 
I  shall  never  hear  her  song 
"Cusha !     Cusha  !"  all  along. 
Where  the  sunny  Lindis  floweth, 

Goeth,  floweth; 
From  the  meads  where  melick  groweth, 
When  the  water  winding  down, 
Onward  floweth  to  the  town. 


348  A  NOTE  ON  JEAN  INGELOW 

I  shall  never  see  her  more 

Where  the  reeds  and  rushes  quiver, 

Shiver,  quiver; 
Stand  beside  the  sobbing  river. 
Sobbing,  throbbing,  in  its  falling 
To  the  sandy  lonesome  shore; 
I  shall  never  hear  her  calling, 
"Leave  your  meadow  grasses  mellow. 

Mellow,  mellow; 
Quit  your  cow-slips,  cow-slips  yellow  ; 
Come  uppe  Whitef oot,  come  uppe  Lightfoot ; 
Quit  your  pipes  of  parsley  hollow. 

Hollow,  hollow ; 
Come  up  Lightfoot,  rise  and  follow; 

Lightfoot,  Whitefoot, 
From  your  clovers  lift  the  head ; 
Come  uppe  Jetty,  follow,  follow, 
Jetty,  to  the  milking  shed." 


CHAPTER  X 
"THREE  SILENCES" 

I  HAVE  said  in  another  lecture  that  Swinburne  and  Rossetti 
had  no  imitators  of  any  worth  to  literature.  Nevertheless 
it  sometimes  happens  that  a  new  poet,  although  not  imitat- 
ing his  predecessors,  may  so  represent  in  his  verse  a  blend- 
ing of  the  best  qualities  of  some  of  them,  that  we  must 
say,  this  man's  work  was  developed  by  the  study  of  such 
and  such  singers.  We  say  that  Tennyson  is  the  poetical 
descendant  of  Keats,  but  we  never  could  say  that  Tenny- 
son imitated  Keats.  You  will  now  understand  exactly 
what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy,  the 
author  of  the  poem  entitled  "Three  Silences,"  is  the  de- 
scendant both  of  Swinburne  and  of  Rossetti.  He  has  united 
some  of  the  best  qualities  of  both — of  Swinburne  as  to  form 
and  as  to  colour,  of  Rossetti  as  to  feeling.  This  poem  shows 
his  relation  to  Swinburne  and  Rossetti,  more  especially  to 
Rossetti.  The  feeling  borders  upon  mystical  tenderness, 
but  you  will  discern  in  it  the  melancholy  doubt  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.     Perhaps  this  only  adds  to  its  sweetness. 

We  may  suppose  that  the  poet  is  referring  to  the  three 
great  sorrows  of  human  existence.  The  first  great  sorrow 
might  be,  for  example,  the  death  of  one's  mother — a  shock 
of  pain  which  the  child  cannot  even  fully  understand  as 
a  fact.  If  he  asks  the  meaning  of  it,  really  no  one  can 
tell  him;  and  the  tender  things  that  are  told  him  in  order 
to  console  him,  do  not  in  the  least  illuminate  for  him  the 
awful  mystery  of  the  fact. 

The  next  great  sorrow  might  be  the  death  of  the  woman 
he  loved.  As  Huxley  says,  the  man  who  stands  with  his 
dead  before  the  abyss  of  the  eternal,  has  questions  to  ask. 
Some  of  them  he  asks  his  own  heart,  some  of  them  he  asks 

349 


350  "THREE  SILENCES" 

the  dead — ^but  there  is  no  answer.  The  second  shock  of 
death  finds  him  very  much  wiser  and  stronger  than  he  was 
when  a  child,  yet  the  mystery  is  not  any  nearer  to  solution 
for  him;  it  is  even  further  away. 

Later  come  other  surprises  of  pain — doubts  of  humanity, 
doubts  of  the  worth  of  life,  doubts  of  everything;  and,  in 
the  moment  of  some  great  sorrow,  one  turns  back  to  the 
habit  of  childhood,  to  the  resource  of  prayer.  And  there 
is  no  answer. 

We  can  suppose  these  to  be  the  Three  Silences.  Never- 
theless this  is  not  a  philosophical  poem  but  a  love  poem. 
It  is  in  a  moment  of  disappointed  affection,  in  the  moment 
of  a  fourth  silence,  that  the  poet  remembers  the  other  three 
periods  of  pain.  This  is  what  gives  the  poem  its  extraor- 
dinary qualities  of  melancholy  and  tenderness. 

'Tis  a  world  of  silences.     I  gave  a  cry 

In  the  first  sorrow  my  heart  could  not  withstand ; 
I  saw  men  pause,  and  listen,  and  look  sad, 
As  though  no  answer  in  their  hearts  they  had ; 
Some  turned  away,  some  came  and  took  my  hand, 
For  all  reply. 

I  stood  beside  a  grave.     Years  had  pass'd  by; 

Sick  with  unanswer'd  life  I  turn'd  to  death. 
And  whisper'd  all  my  questions  to  the  grave, 
And  watch'd  the  flowers  desolately  wave, 

And  the  grass  stir  on  it  with  a  fitful  breath, 
For  all  reply. 

I  rais'd  my  eyes  to  heaven ;  my  prayer  went  high 
Into  the  luminous  mystery  of  the  blue ; 

My  thought  of  God  was  purer  than  a  flame, 

And  God  it  seem'd  a  little  nearer  came, 

Then  pass'd,  and  greater  still  the  silence  grew, 
For  all  reply. 

But  you !     If  I  can  speak  before  I  die, 

I  spoke  to  you  with  all  my  soul,  and  when 


"THREE  SILENCES"  351 

I  look  at  you  't  is  still  my  soul  you  see,  ^ 

Oh,  in  your  heart  was  there  no  word  for  me? 
All  would  have  answer'd  had  you  answer'd  then 
With  even  a  sigh. 

The  last  line  but  one  is  the  most  beautiful  in  the  whole 
poem.  Love  casts  out  sorrow  and  fear  and  doubt  in  the 
first  moment  of  its  ecstasy;  the  lover  says  that  had  she  an- 
swered, the  grave  and  the  heaven  and  God  himself  would 
have  answered  at  the  same  time,  because  in  perfect  hap- 
piness there  is  no  doubt  and  no  fear  and  no  regret.  You 
will  observe  that  this  approaches  to  the  tone  of  Rossetti, 
and  that  there  is  nevertheless  within  it  a  something  which 
is  not  of  Rossetti,  something  sweeter  and  simpler,  and  in 
spite  of  this  simplicity,  equally  artistic. 


CHAPTER  XI 
A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS 

Among  the  minor  poets  of  to-day,  there  is  one  figure  de- 
serving special  attention — William  Watson.  As  a  minor 
poet  his  rank  has  been  a  high  one  from  the  first,  and  he 
is  constantly  rising  to  a  higher  place.  His  appearance  also 
has  some  significance  in  relation  to  the  general  poetical 
movement  of  the  century.  He  represents,  not  the  romantic 
feeling  of  Rossetti  and  his  school,  nor  the  splendid  warmth 
and  colour  and  finish  of  Tennyson's  school ;  rather  he  repre- 
sents the  reaction.  I  told  you  that  after  the  romantics  had 
exhausted  their  art,  and  the  art  of  the  English  language  as 
well,  further  advance  became  impossible,  and  whoever  at- 
tempted to  create  poetry  would  either  have  to  be  an  imi- 
tator, or  would  have  to  go  back  to  simpler  forms.  Mr. 
Watson  took  the  latter  course,  and  he  has  won  success  in 
it.  Spiritually  he  is  a  descendant  of  Wordsworth;  the  best 
feeling  of  Wordsworth  glows  all  through  him  in  a  new  form 
and  with  the  colours  of  another  time.  In  form  he  is  not 
exactly  classic,  but  he  goes  back  to  the  models  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century,  rarely  attempting  any  of  those  more 
elaborate  forms  of  verse  which  the  Victorian  period  brought 
to  the  highest  pitch  of  excellence.  One  of  his  favourite 
forms  is  the  sonnet;  this  is  perhaps  the  most  complicated 
which  he  uses.  A  great  deal  of  his  work  is  in  simpler 
forms.  He  loves  quatrains — complete  poems  in  four  lines. 
He  has  attempted,  not  unsuccessfully,  to  use  the  very  early 
English  forms  of  rhymeless  alliteration,  the  old  Runic  meas- 
ure, in  which  very  few  moderns  have  excelled.  Here  are  a 
few  examples  of  this  form;  you  will  remember,  from  the 
lecture  on  Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  the  rule  of  values  in  this 
metre : 

352 


A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS  353 

England,  my  mother, 
Wardress  of  waters, 
Builder  of  peoples, 
Maker  of  men, — 

Hast  thou  yet  leisure 
Left  for  the  muses? 
Heed'st  thou  the  songsmith 
Forging  the  rhyme? 

Song  is  no  bauble — 
Slight  not  the  songsmith, 
England  my  mother 
Maker  of  men ! 

There  are  some  fine  stanzas  in  the  composition  from  which 
these  extracts  are  made,  but  you  will  see  that  the  Runic  form 
is  not  strictly  preserved,  and  the  thing,  as  a  whole,  lacks 
force.  Tennyson  and  Charles  Kingsley  are  the  only  two 
nineteenth  century  poets  that  I  know  of  who  used  the  North- 
ern measure  with  real  success.  The  best  example  in  Tenny- 
son is  the  translation  of  the  "Battle  of  Brunanburh";  the 
best  example  in  Kingsley  is  to  be  found  among  the  songs 
scattered  through  the  novels  of  "Hypatia"  and  "Hereward." 
But  if  Watson  has  not  always  been  successful  with  the 
simpler  forms  of  verse  as  verse,  he  has  sometimes  been  re- 
markably successful  in  the  direction  of  imagination  and 
force.  He  has  given  us  a  very  remarkable  composition  en- 
titled, "The  Dream  of  Man,"  which  deserves  attention  es- 
pecially because  it  was  inspired  by  the  new  evolutional  phi- 
losophy. In  this  poem  the  poet  considers  the  great  prob- 
lem of  Pain  in  the  universe — why  it  exists,  what  would  hap- 
pen if  it  could  be  entirely  suppressed.  Accepting  the  ex- 
istence of  a  God  as  creator,  he  imagines  the  future  of  man 
in  a  new  way.  The  figure  of  God  is  necessary  for  the 
dramatic  conception  which  follows.  Man  conquers  all  the 
obstacles  which  Nature  and  his  own  weaknesses  oppose  to 
progress.     He  learns  how  to  vanquish  disease,  how  to  con- 


854  A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS 

quer  tempests,  and  how  to  render  danger  no  longer  possible. 
He  even  conquers  pain — that  is,  he  learns  how  to  relieve 
all  physical  pain.  But  moral  pain  remains,  and  the  dread 
of  death.  Death  is  a  power  which  he  cannot  oppose.  He 
can  do  almost  everything  else  that  he  pleases,  except  make 
himself  immortal.  He  discovers  even  means  of  communi- 
cation with  other  solar  systems,  and  extends  his  influence  into 
other  planets;  but  death  is  always  with  him.  He  deter- 
mines to  make  one  last  tremendous  battle  against  death. 
In  the  meantime  he  has  forgotten  the  existence  of  God, 
who  has  been  watching  all  his  progress,  but  in  whom  he  has 
almost  ceased  to  believe.  When  God  observes  that  the 
man  is  about  to  fight  against  death,  he  thinks  it  is  time 
to  warn  him.  He  shows  himself  to  the  spirit  of  man  and 
speaks : 

"O  great  In  thine  own  conceit, 

I  will  show  thee  thy  source,  how  humble,  thy  goal,  for  a  god  how 
unmeet." 

Thereat,  by  the  word  of  the  Maker,  the  Spirit  of  Man  was  led 
To  a  mighty  peak  of  vision,  where  God  to  His  creature  said, 
"Look  Eastward  toward  Time's  sunrise,  and  age  upon  age  untold." 
The  Spirit  of  Man  saw  clearly  the  past  as  a  chart  out-rolled — 
Beheld  his  base  beginnings  in  the  depths  of  time,  and  his  strife, 
With  beasts  and  crawling  horrors  for  leave  to  live,  when  life 
Meant  but  to  slay  and  to  procreate,  to  feed  and  to  sleep,  among 
Mere    mouths,    voracities    boundless,    blind    lusts,    desires    without 

tongue. 
And  ferocities  vast,  fulfilling  their  being's  malignant  law. 
While  nature  was  one  hunger,  and  one  hate,  all  fangs  and  maw. 

This,  of  course,  is  the  vision  of  the  evolutionist  looking 
back  to  the  past,  and  holding  that  man,  evolved  from  a 
speck  of  protoplasm,  passed  gradually  upward  from  the 
very  lowest  forms  of  life,  through  innumerable  transforma- 
tions, before  reaching  the  state  of  intelligence.  But  the 
period  especially  referred  to  in  these  lines  is  the  period 
before  maternal  love  showed  itself,  the  period  preceding  the 


A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS  355 

appearance  of  the  mammalia  or  milk-giving  animals.  Then 
indeed  Nature  was,  as  the  poet  says,  only  hunger  and  lust. 
Reason  had  not  yet  gleamed.  For  the  moment  that  he  first 
perceives  this  vision  of  his  own  past,  man  feels  a  little 
humble,  and  his  pride  is  abased.  But  very  soon  he  turns  to 
God  with  a  reproach  upon  his  lips,  saying,  "Is  not  this  fact 
the  proof  of  my  divinity  *?  If  I  have  been  able  to  rise  up 
from  such  depths,  shall  I  not  be  able  in  the  future  to  rise 
far  beyond  them"?  I  am  not  ashamed."  God  answers, 
"Look  now  to  the  future  that  you  talk  about;  I  will  give 
you  the  power  to  see."  Then  man  looks,  and  he  perceives 
the  great  periods  of  disintegration  and  of  dissolution  which 
philosophers  tell  us  about,  the  periods  when  worlds  become 
old  and  suns  burn  dim,  and  are  finally  extinguished  for- 
ever in  the  infinite  night.  For  evolution  does  not  mean 
only  a  development;  it  likewise  means  a  decline.  Here, 
however,  there  is  a  slight  criticism  to  be  made  upon  the  poet's 
idea.  There  are  two  great  phases  of  evolution  correctly 
suggested  by  him;  but  there  is  a  vaster  phase  of  the  sub- 
ject which,  unlike  George  Meredith,  he  does  not  appear  to 
have  perceived. 

Indeed,  the  digression  which  I  now  venture  to  make  em- 
bodies the  principal  object  of  this  lecture.  It  is  quite  as 
important  that  you  should  understand  the  philosophical 
weaknesses  of  a  poet,  as  that  you  should  understand  his 
strong  points.  Otherwise  he  might  be  able  to  set  up  in 
your  minds  a  totally  wrong  train  of  thinking.  Those  who 
have  a  superficial  knowledge  only  of  evolutional  philosophy 
are  apt  to  imagine  that  it  teaches  a  definite  end  and  a 
definite  beginning  of  universes.  As  for  a  beginning,  the 
philosophy  confesses  itself  to  be  sublimely  ignorant.  Here 
it  can  only  theorise.  It  is  not  impossible,  nor  even  im- 
probable, that  there  may  have  been  a  beginning  of  what 
we  call  matter,  because  the  latest  chemical  science  gives 
some  evidence  of  the  extraordinary  possibility  that  all  com- 
pound forms  of  matter  have  been  evolved  in  a  totally  un- 


356  A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS 

known  way,  from  simpler  forms.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
have  tolerably  good  evidence  as  to  how  universes  begin 
and  end  as  systems.  But  this  beginning  or  ending  is  only 
a  beginning  or  ending  of  particular  forms.  Really  an  end- 
ing is  utterly  inconceivable.  The  end  of  one  evolution  is 
only  the  beginning  of  another.  When  the  suns  burn  out 
and  worlds  crumble  to  dust,  new  suns  and  worlds  arise  from 
the  wreck.  That  is  the  real  teaching  of  evolutional  phi- 
losophy, and  it  is  in  accord  with  Oriental  thought.  But 
there  is  more  than  this.  It  is  almost  certain  that  the  his- 
tory of  one  universe  will  affect  the  history  of  a  succeeding 
universe,  just  as  the  actions  and  habits  of  our  own  genera- 
tion must  certainly  have  some  effect  upon  the  habits  and 
manners  of  our  descendants.  The  experience  not  only  of 
mind,  but  even  of  what  we  call  matter,  have  tendencies 
that  will  influence  future  forms  of  mind  and  matter;  and 
thus  an  enormous  ethical  system  is  suggested  by  the  real 
evolutional  philosophy.  Meredith  is  the  only  English  poet 
who  has  fully  expressed  this  truth.  Watson  has  not  even 
perceived  it.  But  this  fact  does  not  prevent  his  poem 
from  being  very  interesting  in  itself,  because  of  the  way  it 
treats  a  problem  that  no  philosophy  can  perfectly  explain. 
To  return  to  the  story.  Man  is  not  distressed  by  per- 
ceiving the  future  which  God  shows  him — the  end  of  the 
human  race  and  the  crumbling  of  the  world  in  darkness. 
On  the  contrary,  with  desperate  courage  he  proclaims,  "I 
shall  conquer  death  and  make  myself  the  equal  of  God." 
A  tremendous  time  of  struggle  follows;  but  human  intelli- 
gence at  last  wins  the  battle.  Death  is  conquered;  and  even 
God  is  surprised. 

So  to  each  star  in  the  heavens  the  exultant  word  was  blown, 

The  annunciation  tremendous,  Death  is  overthrown! 

And  Space,  in  her  ultimate  borders,  prolonging  the  jubilant  tone, 

With  hollow  ingeminations,  sighed,  Death  is  overthrown! 

And  God,  in  His  house  of  silence,  where  he  dwelleth  aloof,  alone, 

Paused  in  His  tasks  to  hearken:  Death  is  overthrown! 


A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS  357 

But  what  is  the  consequence'?  For  a  short  time  man  is 
very  happy  indeed,  but  only  for  a  time.  All  things  have 
become  possible  to  him — and  he  has  nothing  more  to  do. 
He  has  no  pleasure  of  hope,  because  there  is  nothing  to 
hope  for  which  he  has  not  already  got.  He  has  no  pleas- 
ure of  effort,  because  there  is  nothing  for  which  to  make 
an  effort.  Pleasures  soon  become  uninviting  to  the  idle; 
man's  intelligence  has  at  last  condemned  him  to  eternal 
agonies.  Then  for  the  first  time  he  recognises  that  pleas- 
ure is  impossible  without  pain,  that  they  are  connected  in- 
separably as  light  and  shadow.  In  a  little  while  man  be- 
comes frightfully  unhappy,  cursed  with  eternal  life  and 
unable  to  use  that  life  to  any  purpose.  So  he  humbles  him- 
self at  last  before  God,  praying  for  only  one  thing,  the 
blessed  gift  of  death.  God  hears  the  prayer.  Death  is 
loosened  and  returns  among  men;  and  they  welcome  him 
as  their  best  friend.  And  God  says  to  the  spirit  of  man 
in  conclusion,  as  an  explanation  of  all  that  man  could  not 
understand : 

"O  Man,  my  creature,  thy  lot  was  more  blest  than  mine. 
I  taste  not  delight  of  seeking,  nor  the  boon  of  longing  know. 
There  is  but  one  joy  transcendent,  and  I  hoard  it  not  but  bestow. 
I  hoard  it  not,  nor  have  tasted,  but  freely  I  gave  it  thee — 
The  joy  of  most  glorious  striving,  which  dieth  in  victory." 

Thus  the  poem  proclaims  that  there  is  really  no  happiness 
worth  having  except  the  happiness  of  effort.  This  is  not 
a  commonplace  saying  at  all.  It  is  a  very  deep  saying,  and 
contains  what  seems  to  me  the  nearest  possible  approach 
to  the  truth  of  life.  Perhaps  there  may  occur  to  you,  in 
contrast  to  it,  the  Eastern  religious  saying  that  the  high- 
est happiness  is  rest.  But  the  two  declarations  do  not  really 
contradict  each  other.  Rest  would  be  the  highest  happiness, 
perhaps,  for  unconditioned  being;  but  for  being  having 
form,  having  body,  capable  of  joy  and  sorrow,  pain  and 
pleasure,  rest  could  be  of  no  possible  value.     In  the  last 


358  A  NOTE  ON  WATSON'S  POEMS 

part  of  the  poem  the  poet  really  brings  us  face  to  face  with 
an  apparent  solution  of  the  problem  of  pain.  The  verse 
is  sometimes  rough  and  uneven;  the  poem  is  great  only  as 
a  fancy;  but  as  a  fancy  it  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
composed  during  the  Victorian  age;  and  I  should  therefore 
recommend  you  to  read  it  carefully  and  to  think  about  it. 
I  also  venture  to  say  that  it  is  the  most  remarkable  thing 
which  Watson  has  done,  though  by  no  means  the  most  per- 
fect. Much  more  perfect  is  a  little  piece,  somewhat  in  the 
manner  of  Blake,  called  "World-Strangeness." 

Strange  the  world  about  me  lies, 

Never  yet  familiar  grown — 
Still  disturbs  me  with  surprise, 

Haunts  me  like  a  face  half  known. 

In  this  house  with  starry  dome, 

Floored  with  gem-like  plains  and  seas, 

Shall  I  never  feel  at  home, 
Never  wholly  be  at  ease? 

On  from  room  to  room  I  stray; 

Yet  my  Host  can  ne'er  espy, 
And  I  know  not  to  this  day. 

Whether  guest  or  captive  I. 

So,  between  the  starry  dome 

And  the  floor  of  plains  and  seas, 
I  have  never  felt  at  home, 

Never  wholly  been  at  ease. 


CHAPTER  XII 
A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

Among  the  minor  poets  of  the  Victorian  period,  Robert 
Buchanan  cannot  be  passed  over  unnoticed.  A  contem- 
porary of  all  the  great  singers,  he  seems  to  have  been  always 
a  little  isolated;  I  mean  that  he  formed  no  strong  literary 
friendships  within  the  great  circle.  Most  great  poets  must 
live  to  a  certain  extent  in  solitude;  the  man  who  can  at 
once  mix  freely  in  society  and  find  time  for  the  production 
of  masterpieces  is  a  rare  phenomenon.  George  Meredith  is 
said  to  be  such  a  person.  But  Tennyson,  Rossetti,  Swin- 
burne, Browning,  Fitzgerald,  were  all  very  reserved  and 
retired  men,  though  they  had  little  circles  of  their  own,  and 
a  certain  common  sympathy.  The  case  of  Buchanan  is  dif- 
ferent. His  aloofness  from  the  rest  has  been,  not  the  re- 
sult of  any  literary  desire  for  quiet,  but  the  result,  on  the 
contrary,  of  a  strong  spirit  of  opposition.  Not  only  did  he 
have  no  real  sympathy  with  the  great  poets,  but  he  repre- 
sented in  himself  the  very  prejudices  against  which  they 
had  to  contend.  Hard  headed  Scotchman  as  he  was,  he 
manifested  in  his  attitude  to  his  brother  poets  a  good  deal 
of  the  peculiar,  harsh  conservatism  of  which  Scotchmen 
seemed  to  be  particularly  capable.  And  he  did  himself  im- 
mense injury  in  his  younger  days  by  an  anonymous  attack 
upon  the  morals,  or  rather  upon  the  moral  tone,  of  such 
poets  as  Rossetti  and  Swinburne.  Swinburne's  reply  to  this 
attack  was  terrible  and  withering.  That  of  Rossetti  was 
very  mild  and  gentle,  but  so  effective  that  English  lit- 
erary circles  almost  unanimously  condemned  Buchanan,  and 
attributed  his  attack  to  mere  jealousy.  I  think  the  attack 
was  less  due  to  jealousy  than  to  character,  to  prejudice,  to 
the  harshness  of  a  mind  insensible  to  particular  forms  of 

359 


360     A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

beauty.  And  for  more  than  twenty  years  Buchanan  has 
suffered  extremely  from  the  results  of  his  own  action. 
Thousands  of  people  have  ignored  him  and  his  books  sim- 
ply because  it  was  remembered  that  he  gave  wanton  pain 
to  Rossetti,  a  poet  much  too  sensitive  to  endure  unjust  criti- 
cism. I  suppose  that  for  many  years  to  come  Buchanan  will 
still  be  remembered  in  this  light,  notwithstanding  that  he 
tried  at  a  later  day  to  make  honourable  amends  to  the  mem- 
ory of  Rossetti,  by  dedicating  to  him,  with  a  beautiful  son- 
net of  apology,  the  definitive  edition  of  his  own  works. 

But  the  time  has  now  passed  when  Buchanan  can  be 
treated  as  an  indifferent  figure  in  English  literature.  In 
spite  of  all  disadvantages  he  has  been  a  successful  poet, 
a  successful  novelist,  and  a  very  considerable  influence  in 
the  literature  of  criticism.  Besides,  he  has  written  at  least 
one  poem  that  will  probably  live  as  long  as  the  English 
language,  and  he  has  an  originality  quite  apart  and  quite 
extraordinary,  though  weaker  than  the  originality  of  the 
greater  singers  of  his  time.  As  to  his  personal  history,  little 
need  to  be  said.  He  was  educated  at  Glasgow  University, 
and  his  literary  efforts  have  always  been  somewhat  col- 
oured by  Scotch  sentiment,  in  spite  of  his  long  life  in  literary 
London, 

Three  volumes  represent  his  poetical  production.  In 
these  are  contained  a  remarkable  variety  of  poems — narra- 
tive, mystical,  fantastic,  classical,  romantic,  ranging  from 
the  simplest  form  of  ballad  to  the  complex  form  of  the 
sonnet  and  the  ode.  The  narrative  poems  would,  I  think, 
interest  you  least;  they  are  gloomy  studies  of  human  suf- 
fering, physical  and  moral,  among  the  poor,  and  are  not 
so  good  as  the  work  of  Crabbe  in  the  same  direction.  The 
mystical  poems,  on  the  contrary,  are  of  a  very  curious  kind ; 
for  Buchanan  actually  made  a  religious  philosophy  of  his 
own,  and  put  it  into  the  form  of  verse.  It  is  a  Christian 
-mysticism,  an  extremely  liberal  Unitarianism  forming  the 
basis  of  it;  but  the  author's  notions  about  the  perpetual 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN     361 

order  of  things  are  all  his  own.  He  has,  moreover,  put 
these  queer  fancies  into  a  form  of  verse  imitating  the  ancient 
Celtic  poetry.  We  shall  afterward  briefly  consider  the 
mystical  poetry.  But  the  great  production  of  Buchanan 
is  a  simple  ballad,  which  you  find  very  properly  placed  at 
the  beginning  of  his  collected  poems.  This  is  a  beautiful 
and  extraordinary  thing,  quite  in  accordance  with  the  poet's 
peculiar  views  of  Christianity.  It  is  called  "The  Ballad 
of  Judas  Iscariot."  If  you  know  only  this  composition, 
you  will  know  all  that  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  know 
of  Robert  Buchanan.  It  is  by  this  poem  that  his  place  is 
marked  in  nineteenth  century  literature. 

Before  we  turn  to  the  poem  itselt,  I  must  explain  to  you 
something  of  the  legend  of  Judas  Iscariot.  You  know,  of 
course,  that  Judas  was  the  disciple  of  Christ  who  betrayed 
his  master.  He  betrayed  him  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver, 
according  to  the  tradition;  and  he  betrayed  him  with  a  kiss, 
for  he  said  to  the  soldiers  whom  he  was  guiding,  "The  man 
whom  I  shall  kiss  is  the  man  you  want."  So  Judas  went 
up  to  Christ,  and  kissed  his  face;  and  then  the  soldiers 
seized  Christ.  From  this  has  come  the  proverbial  phrase 
common  to  so  many  Western  languages,  a  "Judas-kiss." 
Afterwards  Judas,  being  seized  with  remorse,  is  said  to 
have  hanged  himself;  and  there  the  Scriptural  story  ends. 
But  in  Church  legends  the  fate  of  Judas  continues  to  be 
discussed  in  the  Middle  Ages.  As  he  was  the  betrayer 
of  a  person  whom  the  Church  considered  to  be  God,  it  was 
deemed  that  he  was  necessarily  the  greatest  of  all  traitors; 
and  as  he  had  indirectly  helped  to  bring  about  the  death  of 
God,  he  was  condemned  as  the  greatest  of  all  murderers. 
It  was  said  that  in  hell  the  very  lowest  place  was  given  to 
Judas,  and  that  his  tortures  exceeded  all  other  tortures. 
But  once  every  year,  it  was  said,  Judas  could  leave  hell, 
and  go  out  to  cool  himself  upon  the  ice  of  the  Northern 
seas.     That  is  the  legend  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

Now  Robert  Buchanan  perceived  that  the  Church  legends 


362  A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

of  the  punishment  of  Judas  might  be  strongly  questioned 
from  a  moral  point  of  view.  Revenge  is  indeed  in  the 
spirit  of  the  Old  Testament;  but  revenge  is  not  exactly  in 
the  spirit  of  the  teaching  of  Christ.  The  true  question  as 
to  the  fate  of  Judas  ought  to  be  answered  by  supposing 
what  Christ  himself  would  have  wished  in  the  matter. 
Would  Christ  have  wished  to  see  his  betrayer  burning  for 
ever  in  the  fires  of  hell*?  Or  would  he  have  shown  to  him 
some  of  that  spirit  manifested  in  his  teachings,  "Do  good 
unto  them  that  hate  you;  forgive  your  enemies"^  As  a 
result  of  thinking  about  the  matter,  Buchanan  produced  his 
ballad.  All  that  could  be  said  against  it  from  a  religious 
point  of  view  is  that  the  spirit  of  it  is  even  more  Christian 
than  Christianity  itself.  From  the  poetical  point  of  view 
we  must  acknowledge  it  to  be  one  of  the  grandest  ballads 
produced  in  the  whole  period  of  Victorian  literature.  You 
will  not  find  so  exquisite  a  finish  here  as  in  some  of  the  bal- 
lads of  Rossetti;  but  you  will  find  a  weirdness  and  a  beauty 
and  an  emotional  power  that  make  up  for  slenderness  in 
workmanship. 

In  order  to  understand  the  beginning  of  the  ballad 
clearly,  you  should  know  the  particulars  about  another  su- 
perstition concerning  Judas.  It  is  said  that  all  the  ele- 
ments refused  to  suffer  the  body  to  be  committed  to  them; 
fire  would  not  bum  it;  water  would  not  let  it  sink  to  rest; 
every  time  it  was  buried,  the  earth  would  spew  it  out  again. 
Man  could  not  bury  that  body,  so  the  ghosts  endeavoured 
to  get  rid  of  it.  The  Field  of  Blood  referred  to  in  the  bal- 
lad is  the  Aceldama  of  Scriptural  legend,  the  place  where 
Judas  hanged  himself. 

'Twas  the  body  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Lay  in  the  Field  of  Blood; 
'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Beside  the  body  stood. 

Black  was  the  earth  by  night, 
And  black  was  the  sky. 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN     363 

Black,  black  were  the  broken  clouds, 
Though  the  red  Moon  went  by. 

Then  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Did  make  a  gentle  moan — 
"I  will  bury  underneath  the  ground 

My  flesh  and  blood  and  bone. 

"The  stones  of  the  field  are  sharp  as  steel 

And  hard  and  cold,  God  wot ; 
And  I  must  bear  my  body  hence 

Until  I  find  a  spot!" 

'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot, 

So  grim,  and  gaunt,  and  grey. 
Raised  the  body  of  Judas  Iscariot 

And  carried  it  away. 

And  as  he  bare  it  from  the  field 

Its  touch  was  cold  as  ice. 
And  the  ivory  teeth  within  the  jaw 

Rattled  aloud,  like  dice. 

The  use  of  the  word  "ivory"  here  has  a  double  function; 
dice  are  usually  made  of  ivory;  and  the  suggestion  of  white- 
ness heightens  the  weird  effect. 

As  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Carried   its   load   with   pain. 
The  Eye  of  Heaven,  like  a  lanthorn's  eye, 

Opened  and  shut  again. 

Half  he  walk'd,  and  half  he  seemed 

Lifted  on  the  cold  wind ; 
He  did  not  turn,  for  chilly  hands 

Were  pushing  from  behind. 

The  first  place  that  he  came  unto 

It  was  the  open  wold 
And  underneath  were  pricky  whins, 

And  a  wind  that  blew  so  cold. 


364  A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

The  next  place  that  he  came  unto 

It  was  a  stagnant  pool, 
And  when  he  threw  the  body  in 

It  floated  light  as  wool. 

He  drew  the  body  on  his  back, 

And  it  was  dripping  chill. 
And  the  next  place  he  came  unto 

Was  a  Cross  upon  a  hill. 

A  Cross  upon  the  windy  hill. 

And  a  cross  on  either  side, 
Three  skeletons  that  swing  thereon, 

Who  had  been  crucified. 

And  on  the  middle  cross-bar  sat 

A  white  Dove  slumbering ; 
Dim  it  sat  in  the  dim  light, 

With  its  head  beneath  its  wing. 

And  underneath  the  middle  Cross 

A  grave  yawned  wide  and  vast, 
But  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Shiver'd,  and  glided  past. 

We  are  not  told  what  this  hill  was,  but  every  reader 
knows  that  Calvary  is  meant,  and  the  skeletons  upon  the 
crosses  are  those  of  Christ  and  the  two  thieves  crucified  with 
him.  The  ghostly  hand  had  pushed  Judas  to  the  place  of 
all  places  where  he  would  have  wished  not  to  go.  We 
need  not  mind  the  traditional  discrepancy  suggested  by  the 
three  skeletons;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  bodies  of  malefac- 
tors were  not  commonly  left  upon  the  crosses  long  enough 
to  become  skeletons,  and  of  course  the  legend  is  that  Christ's 
body  was  on  the  cross  only  for  a  short  time.  But  we  may 
suppose  that  the  whole  description  is  of  a  phantasm,  pur- 
posely shaped  to  stir  the  remorse  of  Judas.  The  white 
dove  sleeping  upon  the  middle  cross  suggests  the  soul  of 
Christ,  and  the  great  grave  made  below  might  have  been 
prepared  out  of  mercy  for  the  body  of  Judas.     If  the  dove 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN     365 

had  awoke  and  spoken  to  him,  would  it  not  have  said,  "You 
can  put  your  body  here,  in  my  grave;  nobody  will  torment 
you."  But  the  soul  of  Judas  cannot  even  think  of  daring 
to  approach  the  place  of  the  crucification. 

The  fourth  place  that  he  came  unto, 

It  was  the  Brig  of  Dread, 
And  the  great  torrents  rushing  down 

Were  deep,  and  swift,  and  red. 

He  dared  not  fling  the  body  in 

For  fear  of  faces  dim. 
And  arms  were  waved  in  the  wild  water 

To  thrust  it  back  to  him. 

There  is  here  a  poetical  effect  borrowed  from  sources 
having  nothing  to  do  with  the  Judas  tradition.  In  old 
Northern  folklore  there  is  the  legend  of  a  River  of  Blood, 
in  which  all  the  blood  ever  shed  in  this  world  continues  to 
flow;  and  there  is  a  reference  to  this  river  in  the  old  Scotch 
ballad  of  "Thomas  the  Rhymer." 

It  was  mirk,  mirk  night,  and  there  was  nae  light. 
And  they  waded  in  red  blude  up  to  the  knee. 
For  a'  the  blude  that's  shed  on  earth, 
Kins  through  the  springs  o'  that  countrie. 

Judas  leaves  the  dreadful  bridge  and  continues  his  wan- 
derings over  the  mountain,  through  woods  and  through  great 
desolate  plains: 

For  months  and  years,  in  grief  and  tears. 

He  walked  the  silent  night ; 
Then  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Perceived  a  far-off  light. 

A  far-off  light  across  the  waste. 

As  dim  as  dim  might  be, 
That  came  and  went  like  a  lighthouse  gleam 

On  a  black  night  at  sea. 


366     A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Crawled  to  the  distant  gleam ; 
And  the  rain  came  down,  and  the  rain  was  blown 

Against  him  with  a  scream. 

'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot, 

Strange,  and  sad,  and  tall, 
Stood  all  alone  at  dead  of  night 

Before  a  lighted  hall. 

And  the  wold  was  white  with  snow. 
And  his  foot-marks  black  and  damp. 

And  the  ghost  of  the  silver  Moon  arose, 
Holding  her  yellow  lamp. 

And  the  icicles  were  on  the  eaves. 
And  the  walls  were  deep  with  white, 

And  the  shadows  of  the  guests  within 
Passed  on  the  window  light. 

The  shadows  of  the  wedding  guests 

Did  strangely  come  and  go. 
And  the  body  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Lay  stretch'd  along  the  snow. 

But  only  the  body.  The  soul  which  has  carried  it  does 
not  lie  down,  but  runs  round  and  round  the  lighted  hall, 
where  the  wedding  guests  are  assembled.  What  wedding^ 
What  guests'?  This  is  the  mystical  banquet  told  of  in  the 
parable  of  the  New  Testament;  the  bridegroom  is  Christ 
himself;  the  guests  are  the  twelve  disciples,  or  rather,  the 
eleven,  Judas  himself  having  been  once  the  twelfth.  And 
the  guests  see  the  soul  of  Judas  looking  in  at  the  window. 

'Twas  the  Bridegroom  sat  at  the  table-head. 
And  the  lights  burnt  bright  and  clear — 

"Oh,  who  is  that,"  the  Bridegroom  said, 
"Whose  weary  feet  I  hear?" 

'Twas  one  look'd  from  the  lighted  hall, 
And  answered  soft  and  slow, 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN      367 

"It  is  a  wolf  runs  up  and  down 
With  a  black  track  in  the  snow." 

The  Bridegroom  in  his  robe  of  white 

Sat  at  the  table-head— 
"Oh,  who  is  that  who  moans  without^" 

The  blessed  Bridegroom  said. 

'Twas  one  looked  from  the  lighted  hall, 

And  answered  fierce  and  low, 
"  'Tis  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Gliding  to  and  fro." 

'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Did  hush  itself  and  stand, 
And  saw  the  Bridegroom  at  the  door 

With  a  light  in  his  hand. 

The  Bridegroom  stood  in  the  open  door 

And  he  was  clad  in  white, 
And  far  within  the  Lord's  Supper 

Was  spread  so  broad  and  bright. 

The  Bridegroom  shaded  his  eyes  and  looked, 

And  his  face  was  bright  to  see— 
"What  dost  thou  here  at  the  Lord's  Supper 

With  thy  body's  sins  T  said  he. 

'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot, 

Stood  black,  and  sad,  and  bare— 
"I  have  wandered  many  nights  and  days; 

There  is  no  light  elsewhere." 

'Twas  the  wedding  guests  cried  out  within. 
And  their  eyes  were  fierce  and  bright— 

"Scourge  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot, 
Away  into  the  night!" 

The  Bridegroom  stood  in  the  open  door 
And  he  waved  hands  still  and  slow. 

And  the  third  time  that  he  waved  his  hands 
The  air  was  thick  with  snow. 


368  A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

And  of  every  flake  of  falling  snow, 

Before   it   touched   the   ground, 
There  came  a  dove,  and  a  thousand  doves 

Made  sweet  sound. 

'Twas  the  body  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Floated  away  full  fleet. 
And  the  wings  of  the  doves  that  bare  it  off 

Were  like  its  winding-sheet. 

'Twas  the  Bridegroom  stood  at  the  open  door. 

And  beckon'd,  smiling  sweet ; 
'Twas  the  soul  of  Judas  Iscariot 

Stole  in,  and  fell  at  his  feet. 

"The  Holy  Supper  is  spread  within, 

And  the  many  candles  shine, 
And  I  have  waited  long  for  thee 

Before  I  poured  the  wine!" 

It  would  have  been  better,  I  think,  to  finish  the  ballad 
at  this  stanza;  there  is  one  more,  but  it  does  not  add  at  all 
to  the  effect  of  what  goes  before.  When  the  doves,  em- 
blems of  divine  love,  have  carried  away  the  sinful  body, 
and  the  Master  comes  to  the  soul,  smiling  and  saying:  "I 
have  been  waiting  for  you  a  long  time,  waiting  for  your 
coming  before  I  poured  the  wine" — there  is  nothing  more 
to  be  said.  We  do  not  want  to  hear  any  more;  we  know 
that  the  Eleven  had  again  become  Twelve;  we  do  not  re- 
quire to  be  told  that  the  wine  is  poured  out,  or  that  Judas 
repents  his  fault.  The  startling  and  beautiful  thing  is  the 
loving  call  and  the  welcome  to  the  Divine  Supper.  You 
will  find  the  whole  of  this  poem  in  the  "Victorian  Anthol- 
ogy," but  I  should  advise  any  person  who  might  think  of 
making  a  Japanese  translation  to  drop  the  final  stanza 
and  to  leave  out  a  few  of  the  others,  if  his  judgment  agrees 
with  mine. 

Read  this  again  to  yourselves,  and  see  how  beautiful  it  is» 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN  369 

The  beauty  is  chiefly  in  the  central  idea  of  forgiveness; 
but  the  workmanship  of  this  composition  has  also  a  very  re- 
markable beauty,  a  Celtic  beauty  of  weirdness,  such  as  we 
seldom  find  in  a  modern  composition  touching  religious  tra- 
dition. It  were  interesting  to  know  how  the  poet  was  able 
to  imagine  such  a  piece  of  work.  I  think  I  can  tell  a  little 
of  the  secret.  Only  a  man  with  a  great  knowledge  and 
love  of  old  ballads  could  have  written  it.  Having  once 
decided  upon  the  skeleton  of  the  story,  he  must  have  gone 
to  his  old  Celtic  literature  and  to  old  Northern  ballads  for 
further  inspiration.  I  have  already  suggested  that  the  bal- 
lad of  "Thomas  the  Rhymer"  was  one  source  of  his  inspira- 
tion, with  its  strange  story  of  the  River  of  Blood.  Thomas 
was  sitting  under  a  tree,  the  legend  goes,  when  he  saw  a 
woman  approaching  so  beautiful  that  he  thought  she  was 
an  angel  or  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  he  addressed  her  on  his 
knees.  But  she  sat  down  beside  him,  and  said,  "I  am  no 
angel  nor  saint;  I  am  only  a  fairy.  But  if  you  think  that 
I  am  so  beautiful,  take  care  that  you  do  not  kiss  me,  for 
if  you  do,  then  I  shall  have  power  over  you."  Thomas 
immediately  did  much  more  than  kiss  her,  and  he  there- 
fore became  her  slave.  She  took  him  at  once  to  fairy  land, 
and  on  their  way  they  passed  through  strange  wild  countries, 
much  like  those  described  in  Robert  Buchanan's  ballad; 
they  passed  the  River  of  Blood;  they  passed  dark  trees 
laden  with  magical  food ;  and  they  saw  the  road  that  reaches 
Heaven  and  the  road  that  reaches  Hell.  But  Buchanan 
could  take  only  a  few  ideas  from  this  poem.  Other  ideas 
I  think  were  inspired  by  a  ballad  of  Goethe's,  or  at  least 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott's  version  of  it,  "Frederick  and  Alice." 
Frederick  is  a  handsome  young  soldier  who  seduces  a  girl 
called  Alice  under  promise  of  marriage,  and  then  leaves 
her.  He  rides  to  join  the  army  in  France.  The  girl  be- 
comes insane  with  grief  and  shame;  and  the  second  day 
later  she  dies  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Meantime 
Frederick  unexpectedly  loses  his  way;  the  rest  I  may  best 


S70  A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

tell  in  the  original  weird  form.     The  horse  has  been  fright- 
ened by  the  sound  of  a  church  bell  striking  the  hour  of  four. 

Heard  ye  not  the  boding  sound, 

As  the  tongue  of  yonder  tower, 
Slowly,  to  the  hills  around. 

Told  the  fourth,  the  fated  hour? 

Starts  the  steed,  and  snuffs  the  air. 

Yet  no  cause  of  dread  appears ; 
Bristles  high  the  rider's  hair, 

Struck  with  strange  mysterious  fears. 

Desperate  as  his  terrors  rise. 

In  the  steed  the  spur  he  hides ; 
From  himself  in  vain  he  flies  ; 

Anxious,  restless,  on  he  rides. 

Seven  long  days,  and  seven  long  nights, 

Wild  he  wandered,  woe  the  while ! 
Ceaseless  care,  and  causeless  fright, 

Urge  his  footsteps  many  a  mile. 

Dark  the  seventh  sad  night  descends ; 

Rivers  swell,  and  rain-streams  pour 
While  the  deafening  thunder  lends 

All  the  terrors  of  its  roar. 

At  the  worst  part  of  his  dreary  wandering  over  an  un- 
known and  gloomy  country,  Frederick  suddenly  sees  a  light 
far  away.  This  seems  to  him,  as  it  seemed  in  Buchanan's 
ballad  to  the  soul  of  Judas,  a  light  of  hope.  He  goes  to 
the  light,  and  finds  himself  in  front  of  a  vast  and  ruinous 
looking  church.  Inside  there  is  a  light;  he  leaps  down  from 
his  horse,  descends  some  steps,  and  enters  the  building. 
Suddenly  all  is  darkness  again;  he  has  to  feel  his  way. 

Long  drear  vaults  before  him  lie ! 

Glimmering  lights  are  seen  to  glide ! — 
"Blessed  Mary,  hear  my  cry ! 

Deign  a  sinner's  steps  to  guide!" 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN  371 

Often  lost  their  quivering  beam, 

Still  the  lights  move  slow  before, 
Till  they  rest  their  ghastly  gleam 

Right  against  an  iron  door. 

He  is  really  in  the  underground  burial  place  of  a  church, 
in  the  vaults  of  the  dead,  but  he  does  not  know  it.  He 
hears  voices. 

Thundering  voices  from  within, 

Mixed  with  peals  of  laughter,  rose ; 

As  they  fell,  a  solemn  strain 

Lent  its  wild  and  wondrous  close ! 

'Midst  the  din,  he  seem'd  to  hear 

Voice  of  friends,  by  death  removed; — 

Well  he  knew  that  solemn  air, 
'Twas  the  lay  that  Alice  loved. 

Suddenly  a  great  bell  booms  four  times,  and  the  iron 
door  opens.  He  sees  within  a  strange  banquet;  the  seats 
are  cofRns,  the  tables  are  draped  with  black,  and  the  dead 
are  the  guests. 

Alice,  in  her  grave-clothes  bound. 

Ghastly  smiling,  points  a  seat. 
All  arose  with  thundering  sound ; 

All  the  expected  stranger  greet. 

High  their  meagre  arms  they  wave. 
Wild  their  notes  of  welcome  swell ; 

"Welcome,  traitor,  to  the  grave ! 
Perjured,  bid  the  light  farewell  I" 

I  have  given  the  greater  part  of  this  strange  ballad  be- 
cause of  its  intrinsic  value  and  the  celebrity  of  its  German 
author.  But  the  part  that  may  have  inspired  Buchanan  is 
only  the  part  concerning  the  wandering  over  the  black  moor, 
the  light  seen  in  the  distance,  the  ghostly  banquet  of  the 
dead,  and  the  ruined  vaults.  A  great  poet  would  have 
easily  found  in  these  details  the  suggestion  which  Buchanan 


372  A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

found  for  the  wandering  of  Judas  to  the  light  and  the  un- 
expected vision  of  the  dead  assembling  to  a  banquet  with 
him — but  only  this.  The  complete  transformation  of  the 
fancy,  the  transmutation  of  the  purely  horrible  into  a 
ghostly  beauty  and  tenderness,  is  the  wonderful  thing. 
After  all,  this  is  the  chief  duty  of  the  poet  in  this  world, 
to  discover  beauty  even  in  the  ugly,  suggestions  of  beauty 
even  in  the  cruel  and  terrible.  This  Buchanan  did  once 
so  very  well  that  his  work  will  never  be  forgotten,  but 
he  received  thereafter  no  equal  inspiration,  and  the  "Bal- 
lad of  Judas"  remains,  alone  of  its  kind,  his  only  real  claim 
to  high  distinction. 

The  poetry  of  Robert  Buchanan  is  not  great  enough  as 
poetry  to  justify  many  quotations,  but  as  thinking  it  de- 
mands some  attention.  His  third  volume  is  especially  of 
interest  in  this  respect,  because  it  contains  a  curious  ex- 
position of  his  religious  idealism.  Buchanan  is  a  mystic; 
there  is  no  doubt  that  he  has  been  very  much  influenced  by 
the  mysticism  of  Blake.  The  whole  of  the  poems  collec- 
tively entitled  "The  Devil's  Mystics,"  must  have  been  sug- 
gested by  Blake's  nomenclature.  This  collection  belongs 
to  "the  Book  of  Orm,"  which  might  have  been  well  called 
"The  Book  of  Robert  Buchanan."  Orm  ought  to  be  a 
familiar  name  to  students  of  English  literature,  one  of  the 
old  English  books  also  being  called  "The  Ormulum,"  be- 
cause it  was  written  by  a  man  named  Orm.  Buchan- 
an's Orm  is  represented  to  be  an  ancient  Celt,  who  has 
visions  and  dreams  about  the  mystery  of  the  universe,  and 
who  puts  these  visions  and  dreams,  which  are  Buchanan's, 
into  old-fashioned  verse. 

The  great  Ernest  Renan  said  in  his  "Dialogues  Phi- 
losophiques"  that  if  everybody  in  the  world  who  had  thought 
much  about  the  mystery  of  things  were  to  write  down  his 
ideas  regarding  the  Infinite,  some  great  truth  might  be 
discovered  or  deduced  from  the  result.  Buchanan  has  tried 
to  follow  this  suggestion;  for  he  has  very  boldly  put  down 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN  373 

all  his  thoughts  about  the  world  and  man  and  God.  As 
to  results,  however,  I  can  find  nothing  particularly  original 
except  two  or  three  queer  fancies,  none  of  which  relates  to 
the  deeper  riddles  of  being.  In  a  preface  in  verse,  the 
author  further  tells  us  that  when  he  speaks  of  God  he  does 
not  mean  the  Christian  God  or  the  God  of  India  nor  any 
particular  God,  but  only  the  all-including  Spirit  of  Life. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  we  find  his  imagery  to  be  certainly  bor- 
rowed from  old  Hebrew  and  old  Christian  thinkers;  here 
he  has  not  fulfilled  expectations.  But  the  imagery  is  used 
to  express  some  ideas  which  I  think  you  will  find  rather 
new — not  exactly  philosophical  ideas,  but  moral  parables. 

One  of  these  is  a  parable  about  the  possible  consequences 
of  seeing  or  knowing  the  divine  power  which  is  behind  the 
shadows  of  things.  Suppose  that  there  were  an  omnipo- 
tent God  whom  we  could  see;  what  would  be  the  conse- 
quences of  seeing  him*?  Orm  discovered  that  the  blue  of 
the  sky  was  a  blue  veil  drawn  across  Immensity  to  hide 
the  face  of  God.  One  day,  in  answer  to  prayer,  God  drew 
aside  the  blue  veil.  Then  all  mankind  were  terrified  be- 
cause they  saw,  by  day  and  by  night,  an  awful  face  look- 
ing down  upon  them  out  of  the  sky,  the  sleepless  eyes  of  the 
face  seeming  to  watch  each  person  constantly  wherever  he 
was.  Did  this  make  men  happy ^  Not  at  all.  They  be- 
came tired  of  life,  finding  themselves  perpetually  watched; 
they  covered  their  cities  with  roofs,  and  lived  by  lamp  light 
only,  in  order  to  avoid  being  looked  at  by  the  face,  God. 
This  queer  parable,  recounted  in  the  form  of  a  dream,  has 
a  meaning  worth  thinking  about.  The  ultimate  suggestion, 
of  course,  is  that  we  do  not  know  and  see  many  things  be- 
cause it  would  make  us  very  unhappy  to  know  them. 

An  equally  curious  parable,  also  related  in  the  form  of 
a  dream,  treats  of  the  consolations  of  death.  What  would 
become  of  mankind  if  there  were  no  death"?  I  think  you 
will  remember  that  I  told  you  how  the  young  poet  William 
Watson  took  up  the  same  subject  a  few  years  ago,  in  his 


3T4j  a  note  on  ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

remarkable  poem  "A  Dream  of  Man."  Watson's  supposi- 
tion is  that  men  became  so  wise,  so  scientific,  that  they  were 
able  to  make  themselves  immortal  and  to  conquer  death. 
But  at  last  they  became  frightfully  unhappy,  unutterably 
tired  of  life,  and  were  obliged  to  beg  God  to  give  them 
back  death  again.  And  God  said  to  them,  "You  are  hap- 
pier than  I  am.  You  can  die;  I  cannot.  The  only  hap- 
piness of  existence  is  effort.  Now  you  can  have  your  friend 
death  back  again."  Buchanan's  idea  was  quite  different 
from  this.  His  poem  is  called  "The  Dream  of  the  World 
without  Death."  Men  prayed  to  God  that  there  might  be 
no  more  death  or  decay  of  the  body;  and  the  prayer  was 
granted.  People  continued  to  disappear  from  the  world, 
but  they  did  not  die.  They  simply  vanished,  when  their 
time  came,  as  ghosts.  A  child  goes  out  to  play  in  the 
field,  for  example,  and  never  comes  back  again;  the  mother 
finds  only  the  empty  clothes  of  her  darling.  Or  a  peasant 
goes  to  the  fields  to  work,  and  his  body  is  never  seen  again. 
People  found  that  this  was  a  much  worse  condition  of  things 
than  had  been  before.  For  the  consolation  of  knowledge, 
of  certainty,  was  not  given  them.  The  dead  body  is  a 
certificate  of  death;  nature  uses  corruption  as  a  seal,  an 
official  exhibit  and  proof  of  the  certainty  of  death.  But 
when  there  is  no  body,  no  corpse,  no  possible  sign,  how 
horrible  is  the  disappearance  of  the  persons  we  love.  The 
mystery  of  it  is  a  much  worse  pain  than  the  certain  knowl- 
edge of  death.  Doubt  is  the  worst  form  of  torture.  Well, 
when  mankind  had  this  experience,  they  began  to  think 
that,  after  all,  death  was  a  beautiful  and  good  thing,  and 
they  prayed  most  fervently  that  they  might  again  have  the 
privilege  of  dying  in  the  old  way,  of  putting  the  bodies  of 
their  dead  into  beautiful  tombs,  of  being  able  to  visit  the 
graves  of  their  beloved  from  time  to  time.  So  God  took 
pity  on  them  and  gave  them  back  death,  and  the  poet  sings 
his  gratitude  thus: 


A  NOTE  ON  ROBERT  BUCHANAN  Q79 

And  I  cried,  "O  unseen  Sender  of  Corruption, 
I  bless  thee  for  the  wonder  of  Thy  mercy, 
Which  softeneth  the  mystery  and  the  parting. 

"I  bless  Thee  for  the  change  and  for  the  comfort, 
The  bloomless  face,  shut  eyes,  and  waxen  fingers, — 
For  Sleeping,  and  for  Silence,  and  Corruption." 

This  idea  is  worth  something,  if  only  as  a  vivid  teaching 
of  the  necessity  of  things  as  they  are.  The  two  fantasies 
thus  commented  upon  are  the  most  original  things  in  the 
range  of  this  mystical  book.  I  could  not  recommend  any 
further  reading  or  study  of  the  poet,  except  perhaps  of 
his  "Vision  of  the  Man  Accurst."  But  even  this  has  not 
the  true  stamp  of  originality;  and  only  the  "Ballad  of  Judas 
Iscariot"  is  certain  not  to  be  soon  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY" 

There  are  several  reasons  why  the  poem  entitled  "Dor- 
othy" should  be  made  well  known  to  you.  First  of  all 
it  represents  in  a  very  striking  manner  a  new  spirit  of  pas- 
toral poetry  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Victorian  period.  In 
the  second  place  it  is  a  poem  which  has  been  very  widely 
read  and  admired  both  in  England  and  America — in  fact, 
wherever  the  English  language  is  read.  And  in  the  third 
place  it  can  give  you  some  notions  about  the  life  of  the  peas- 
ant classes  in  England  and  about  their  relation  to  the  upper 
classes,  almost  better  than  any  other  book  can  do.  Finally 
I  may  add  that  it  touches  strongly  and  sensibly  upon  cer- 
tain economic  facts  of  life,  opposing  the  sentimental  laws 
forbidding  women  to  do  the  work  of  men.  You  know  that 
there  are  several  sides  to  this  question ;  it  is  not  to  be  lightly 
decided,  and  I  am  not  a  teacher  of  ethics  or  economics,  or 
of  the  relation  between  ethics  and  economics,  so  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  express  any  opinion  on  the  subject  at  present. 
But  you  should  certainly  be  interested  in  the  view  of  the 
matter  taken  by  the  author  of  this  book,  who  ought  to  be 
able  to  judge  of  such  matters  well,  since  he  is  an  eminent 
lawyer,  a  good  scholar,  an  official  representing  government 
interests  in  the  country  districts,  and  a  farmer  and  a  poet. 
Such  a  combination  of  knowledge  and  experience  should  en- 
title a  man  to  express  an  opinion  about  the  conditions  of  the 
peasantry. 

When  this  book  first  appeared  it  was  published  anony- 
mously. But  now  it  is  well  known  as  the  work  of  Arthur 
Joseph  Munby,  an  English  lawyer  who  occasionally  visits 
London,  but  who  has  lived  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life 
in  the  country,  especially  in  Surrey.     Munby  was  born  in 

376 


A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY"  377 

Yorkshire,  which  district,  by  the  way,  possesses  the  finest 
peasantry  in  England.  His  birth  was  in  1828,  so  that  he 
must  now  be  quite  an  old  man;  but  he  published  a  volume 
of  new  poem.s  only  this  year.  It  is  rather  a  curious  combi- 
nation which  he  presents — farmer,  country  squire,  and  law- 
yer all  in  one,  yet  finding  time  to  be  a  poet.  University 
training  developed  his  power  to  write  poetry  almost  as 
easily  as  other  men  write  prose;  this  partly  may  account 
for  the  phenomenon.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  is  great 
poetry ;  no  man  can  be  a  great  poet  and  exercise  three  other 
professions  at  the  same  time.  But  it  is  not  bad  poetry, 
it  is  actually  better  than  the  work  of  Arthur  Hugh  Clough, 
the  friend  of  Matthew  Arnold,  who  wrote  very  much  the 
same  kind  of  verse,  and  there  is  a  merit  in  it  besides  that 
of  poetry  proper.  As  a  romance  in  verse,  the  measure  and 
construction  of  "Dorothy"  do  not  greatly  impress  the 
reader;  in  fact  you  are  sometimes  surprised,  and  almost  made 
angry,  by  the  apparent  indifference  to  poetical  rules.  But 
after  you  have  read  the  work,  the  impression  left  upon  the 
mind  is  very  strong  and  very  pleasing,  and  you  will  not 
forget  it.  The  book  has  the  power  to  charm;  it  has  charmed 
tens  of  thousands  of  readers.  The  secret  of  the  charm 
is  not,  as  I  have  suggested,  in  the  literary  art,  but  in  the 
feeling  of  the  book,  in  the  author's  grasp  of  the  subject,  in 
his  knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  country  life.  From 
boyhood  this  man  liked  the  peasants,  saw  their  good  quali- 
ties and  admired  them,  learned  their  dialects  and  liked  to 
talk  to  them.  I  may  mention  here  also  that  he  has  written 
a  good  deal  of  poetry  in  peasant  dialect,  although  a  uni- 
versity scholar.  And  one  day  he  conceived  the  idea  of 
trying  to  interest  the  English  upper  classes  in  the  humble 
life  of  these  country  folk  whom  they  pretended  to  despise. 
But  he  had  many  prejudices  to  face  in  order  to  be  able  to 
do  this  well.  He  had  to  be  prepared  to  meet  every  possible 
kind  of  sneer  and  jeer  on  the  part  of  snobs  and  cads.  He 
had  to  expect  to  be  told  that  his  peasants  were  dirty,  smelled 


378  A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY" 

bad,  had  ugly  hands,  ugly  faces,  ugly  feet,  ugly  manners, 
and  detestable  stupidity  into  the  bargain.  And  then  he 
met  these  prejudices  and  affectations  simply  by  drawing 
peasant  life  as  he  saw  it.  He  described  all  the  dirt  and 
the  smell  and  the  vulgarity  and  the  ignorance  in  his  poems 
— even  exaggerating  them ;  and  nevertheless  he  made  people 
like  them,  admire  them,  almost  love  them  when  he  had 
done.  The  fact  is,  nearly  all  class  prejudices,  based  upon 
social  conditions,  are  utter  humbug;  and  they  would 
scarcely  exist  if  the  upper  classes  were  less  ignorant  than 
they  are  of  what  is  noble  and  good  and  human  in  the  low- 
est classes.  Munby  did  not  attempt  to  fight  prejudices  by 
denying  their  cause  or  denying  their  assertions,  but  by  bring- 
ing the  real  human  facts  into  the  light,  and  making  people 
look  at  them  fairly  and  squarely.  I  think  this  is  all  I  need 
say  about  the  social  side  of  the  poem. 

But  I  must  tell  you  something  about  English  peasant  life, 
country  life,  labouring  life,  before  I  quote  to  you  anything 
from  "Dorothy."  I  do  not  think  that  much  is  known  in 
Japan  about  English  country  life,  though  a  good  deal  is 
now  known  -about  the  life  of  the  cities  and  of  their  indus- 
trial classes.  Japanese  travellers  do  not  have  either  the 
time  or  the  opportunity  to  go  out  into  the  country  and 
study  the  peasant.  And  yet,  not  to  study  the  peasantry  of 
a  country  must  be  to  remain  with  a  very  imperfect  knowl- 
edge of  the  nation.  For  the  body,  the  strength,  the  whole 
power  of  the  race  is  there.  In  England,  perhaps,  the  diffi- 
culty of  studying  the  agricultural  classes  is  especially  great, 
for  the  extraordinary  reason  that  the  agricultural  classes 
are  gradually  disappearing.  The  entire  country  is  owned 
by  a  few  thousand  people;  there  is  no  future  in  store  for 
the  common  worker,  and  the  advent  of  the  complicated  ma- 
chinery into  field  work  dispenses  with  a  great  deal  of  hu- 
man labour.  Therefore  the  English  peasantry  emigrates 
whenever  it  can,  and  in  the  future  its  place  will  perhaps 


A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY"  379 

be  taken  by  an  inferior  foreign  class.  But,  as  I  have  said,  to 
know  the  English  race  one  should  know  something  about  its 
peasants.  The  excellent  French  thinker  Taine,  who  made 
an  admirable  book  of  English  travels,  understood  this  per- 
fectly well,  and  he  based  his  studies  of  English  char- 
acter largely  upon  his  observation  of  the  agricultural  and 
the  working  classes. 

At  the  time  when  Munby  wrote  his  poem,  women  in  the 
English  country  district  used  to  do  extraordinary  work,  per- 
haps more  than  they  do  now.  There  were  plenty  of  women 
blacksmiths,  women  colliers,  women  farmers — in  fact,  al- 
most every  department  of  heavy  labour  had  places  for 
women  as  well  as  for  men.  I  believe  that  legislation  sub- 
sequently changed  a  good  many  of  these  conditions,  forbid- 
ding women,  for  example,  to  work  in  the  coal  mines  dressed 
in  men's  clothes.  But  as  a  boy  I  remember  seeing  much 
heavy  work  done  by  women,  and  I  do  not  know  that  the  leg- 
islation was  altogether  wise.  Only  a  very  particular  class 
of  women  could  do  the  work  against  which  the  laws  were 
passed,  and  that  class  of  women  were  particularly  well 
fitted  by  nature  to  do  it.  You  could  not  have  told,  by 
the  eye  alone,  whether  those  working  women  were  men  or 
women;  their  voices  might  betray  them,  but  not  their  walk 
or  their  bulk.  Among  them  were  figures  six  feet  high,  with 
shoulders  broad  as  a  wrestler's,  arms  muscled  like  those  of 
a  man,  and  walking  with  the  long  swinging  step  of  a  man 
in  great  heavy  shoes.  The  impression  you  received  on  see- 
ing them  work  was  that  there  was  nothing  womanly  about 
them,  for  their  roughness  of  appearance  was  equal  to  the 
roughness  of  men. 

Among  the  peasant  class  proper — I  mean  among  those 
who  remain  all  their  lives  at  farm  work — this  masculinity 
does  not  appear  to  the  same  degree  in  manners.  The 
labouring  woman  in  the  country  is  often  huge  and  strong 
but  seldom  unwomanly.     Her  manner  remains  gentle  and 


380  A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY" 

kind.  It  is  the  contact  with  the  life  of  the  mines,  with  me- 
chanical industries  and  manufactories,  that  seems  to  make 
the  woman  rough.  They  lose  the  moral  tone  of  their  sex — 
I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  they  become  bad,  but  they  cease 
to  act  and  talk  like  women.  It  is  not  so  in  the  country;  it 
is  so  only  in  the  manufacturing  and  mining  towns.  Now 
it  is  of  the  country  girl  that  Mr.  Munby  writes,  and  he  takes 
for  his  type  one  of  the  lowest  class  of  workers,  a  female  farm 
servant. 

I  must  tell  you  something  about  these  female  servants. 
A  woman  must  be  very  strong  indeed  to  be  a  servant  in  the 
country,  not  only  in  England  but  even  in  America.  A 
woman  employed  as  servant  on  a  farm  must  do  what  would 
be  considered  in  this  country  hard  work  for  at  least  six  per- 
sons. She  must  cook  three  times  a  day  for  the  entire  house- 
hold, she  must  bake  bread  in  addition  to  cooking,  she  must 
do  all  the  washing  of  the  family,  and  keep  the  house  clean, 
and  she  must  help  with  the  work  on  the  farm — milking  and 
feeding  the  cow,  taking  care  of  the  poultry,  doing,  in  short, 
the  work  of  both  a  man  and  a  woman.  One  must  be  very 
strong  indeed  for  such  labour;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that 
women  are  gradually  passing  from  the  sphere  of  domestic 
employment,  to  be  replaced  by  men. 

Can  we  imagine  any  romance  in  so  hard  a  life*?  Our 
English  poet  has  proved  to  us  that  romance  may  be  found 
in  it  quite  as  well  as  in  any  other  walk  of  life — though  of  a 
different  kind. 

Let  us  take  the  plan  of  the  story  as  he  tells  it  to  us, 
giving  extracts  here  and  there  to  show  the  attraction  of  his 
verse.  It  is  good  verse,  all  hexameters  and  pentameters 
alternating;  and  although  this  kind  of  verse  cannot  be  made 
quite  perfect  in  English  by  anybody,  Mr.  Munby's  hexam- 
eters will  certainly  compare  very  well  with  either  Long- 
fellow's or  Clough's.  He  first  tells  us  about  the  birth  of 
the  girl  on  the  farm — an  illegitimate  child,  and  therefore 
destined  to  hard  work  without  any  parental  affection  to 


A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY"  381 

soften  the  way  for  her,  but  honest,  good,  kind,  and  beauti- 
ful. Here  is  a  little  description,  which  includes  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  farm  girl  in  general : 

Weakly  her  mistress  was,  and  weakly  the  two  little  daughters ; 

But  by  her  master's  side  Dorothy  wrought  like  a  son ; 

Wrought  out  of  doors  on  the  farm,  and  labour'd  in  dairy  and  kitchen 

Doing  the  work  of  two ;  help  and  support  of  them  all. 

Rough  were  her  broad  brown  hands,  and  within,  ah  me !  they  were 

horny ; 
Rough  were  her  thick  ruddy  arms,  shapely  and  round  as  they  were; 
Rough  too  her  glowing  cheeks ;  and  her  sunburnt  face  and  forehead 
Browner  than  cairngorm  seem'd,  set  in  her  amber-bright  hair. 
Yet  'twas  a  handsome  face ;  the  beautiful  regular  features 
Labour  could  never  spoil,  ignorance  could  not  degrade : 
And  in  her  clear  blue  eyes  bright  gleams  of  intelligence  linger'd ; 
And  on  her  warm  red  mouth,  Love  might  have  'lighted  and  lain. 
Never  an  unkind  word  nor  a  rude  unseemly  expression 
Came  from  that  soft  red  mouth ;  nor  in  those  sunny  blue  eyes 
Lived  there  a  look  that  belied  the  frankness  of  innocent  girlhood — 
Fearless,  because  it  is  pure ;  gracious,  and  gentle,  and  calm. 
Have  you  not  seen  such  a  face,  among  rural  hard-working  maidens 
Born  but  of  peasant  stock,  free  from  our  Dorothy's  shame? 
Just  such  faces  as  hers — a  countenance  open  and  artless. 
Where  no  knowledge  appears,  culture,  nor  vision  of  grace; 
Yet  which  an  open-air  life  and  simple  and  strenuous  labour 
Fills  with  a  charm  of  its  own — precious,  and  warm  from  the  heart? 

I  think  the  author  insists  too  much  in  his  poem  upon  the 
roughness  and  hardness  of  Dorothy's  hands.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  no  soft-handed  woman  could  be  a  good  worker,  and 
it  is  the  custom  to  look  at  a  woman's  hands  before  giving 
her  work  to  do  on  a  farm.  If  they  are  soft  and  white,  they 
belong  to  a  lazy  woman.  It  is  good  to  recognise  the  hon- 
esty of  a  hard  working  hand,  to  recognise  that  there  is  a 
certain  nobility  in  labour,  but  I  think  that  Munby  insists 
too  much  on  the  ugliness  of  hard  hands.  Really  hard  hands 
are  not  any  uglier  than  any  other  hands,  except  to  fastidious 
persons;  perhaps  Mr.  Munby  was  only  desiring  to  antici- 
pate fastidious  criticism.     He  goes  on  to  give  a  description 


382  A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY" 

of  the  girl  on  the  farm  in  winter,  spring,  summer,  and 
autumn.  The  description  of  the  spring  work  is  fine;  the 
subject  is  ploughing.  It  is  very  hard  to  plough  perfectly, 
unless  you  have  been  brought  up  to  the  work  from  a  child. 
Prizes  for  straight  ploughing  used  to  be  given  in  different 
parts  of  the  country;  perhaps  they  are  still  given,  but  the 
introduction  of  steam  ploughing  machinery  from  America  is 
very  likely  to  do  away  with  hand  ploughing  in  the  course 
of  time.  If  that  day  comes,  a  description  of  ploughing  like 
this  will  be  remembered  and  read  with  a  pleasure  somewhat 
like  that  which  we  feel  when  we  read  in  Virgil  accounts  of 
the  work  done  upon  old  Roman  farms: 

Well  can  our  Dorothy  plough — as  a  girl  she  learnt  it  and  loved  it; 

Leading  the  teams  at  first,  followed  by  master  himself; 

Then  when  she  grew  to  the  height  and  the  strength  of  a  muscular 

woman, 
Grasping  the  stilts  in  her  pride,  driving  the  mighty  machine. 
Ah,  what  a  joy  for  her,  at  early  morn  in  the  springtime 
Driving  from  hedge  to  hedge  furrows  as  straight  as  a  line ! 
Seeing  the  crisp  brown  earth,  like  waves  in  the  bow  of  a  vessel 
Rise,  curl  over,  and  fall,  under  the  thrust  of  the  share ; 
Orderly  falling  and  still,  its  edges  all  creamy  and  crumbling, 
But  on  the  sloping  side,  polished  and  purple  as  steel ; 
Till  all  the  fields  she  thought  looked  bright  as  the  bars  of  that  gridiron 
In  the  great  window  at  church,  over  the  gentle  folks'  pew : 
And  ever  more  as  she  strode  she  had  cheerful  companions  behind  her ; 
Rooks  and  smaller  birds,  following  after  her  plough : 
And  ere  the  ridges  were  done,  there  was  gossamer  woven  above  them. 
Gossamer  dewy  and  white,  shining  like  foam  on  the  sea. 

Of  descriptions  like  these  there  are  not  many,  for  the 
subject  of  the  ppem  is  the  description  of  character  rather 
than  of  hills  and  fields,  and  descriptions  of  character  are 
better  given  through  the  words  and  actions  of  a  person  than 
in  any  other  way.  So  a  large  proportion  of  the  poem  is 
simply  a  narrative  of  acts,  mingled  with  a  record  of  col- 
loquial speech.  Still  I  may  quote  you  a  few  lines  about  a 
sunset : 


A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY"  383 

Well,  there  was  something  to  see;  for  the  sun  was  setting  in  glory, 
Glowing  through  marvellous  clouds,  molten  suffused  with  his  light; 
Clouds  all  rosy  above,  like  the  snows  of  an  Alpine  sunset, 
But  in  the  heart  of  their  snow  thrilled  with  a  cavernous  fire ; 
Clouds  that  were  couched  superb  in  a  blaze  of  opal  and  emerald, 
Haunting  the  clear,  cool  sky  lucid  and  lovely  and  blue. 

The  quotations  will  show  the  very  considerable  power 
of  art  which  the  poet  possesses  and  can  use  at  will.  But 
the  art  of  showing  the  beauty  and  charm  of  a  simple  char- 
acter is  much  more  difficult  than  the  painting  of  clouds, 
and  this  also  the  poet  has  done.  He  traces  for  us  the  life 
of  the  girl  up  to  the  time  of  her  wedding,  and  the  object  of 
the  whole  work  is  certainly,  in  no  small  degree,  the  praise 
of  honest  labour  that  strengthens  the  body  and  keeps  the 
mind  pure.  Why  discourage  women  from  labour  in  the 
fields,  he  asks,  since  such  work  is  good  both  for  the  body 
and  for  the  mind;  and  the  women  capable  of  such  work 
become  the  mothers  of  the  strong  and  steady  men  that  make 
up  the  force  of  a  country.  It  is  not,  he  reminds  us,  the 
sickly  and  delicate  girls  working  in  factories  or  in  shops, 
who  are  likely  to  be  the  mothers  of  the  best  men. 

Probably  this  poem  of  Mr.  Munby's  had  very  little  ef- 
fect in  checking  the  course  of  things,  and  probably  the  ag- 
ricultural population  of  England  must  disappear.  The 
whole  country  is  becoming  divided  into  nothing  but 
manufacturing  districts  or  ornamental  estates.  It  does  not 
pay  to  grow  corn  or  wheat  nor  even  to  raise  cattle  and 
sheep  in  England.  It  is  cheaper  to  buy  such  things  from 
abroad.  So  the  farming  population  is  disappearing.  The 
best  men  and  women  go  to  other  countries — Canada, 
America,  Australia;  the  weaker  part  of  the  peasant  popula- 
tion drift  into  factory  life.  These  things  cannot  be  helped. 
But  the  poet  has  preserved  for  us  a  fine  picture  of  this 
fine  peasant  life,  which  will  be  read  when  the  peasant  life 
itself  has  passed  from  England.  The  book  suggests  or 
ought  to  suggest  a  good  deal  to  lovers  of  literature  in  other 


384  A  NOTE  ON  MUNBY'S  "DOROTHY" 

countries  than  England,  especially  the  fact  that  peasant  life 
is  a  subject  for  poetry;  and  that  the  poet  able  to  perceive 
its  relation  to  the  moral  and  physical  well-being  of  a  nation 
has  a  great  opportunity  before  him. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
ROBERT  BRIDGES 

This  poet,  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  English  minor  poets  of 
our  time,  and  represented  in  literature  by  a  very  considerable 
bulk  of  work,  happens  to  be  one  of  the  least  known.  He 
was  never  popular;  and  even  to-day,  when  recognition  is 
coming  to  him  slowly,  almost  as  slowly  as  it  came  to  George 
Meredith,  he  is  chiefly  read  by  the  cultivated  classes. 
There  are  several  reasons  for  this.  One  is  that  he  is  al- 
together an  old-fashioned  poet,  writing  with  the  feeling  of 
the  eighteenth  rather  than  of  the  nineteenth  century,  so  that 
persons  in  search  of  novelty  are  not  likely  to  look  at  him. 
Then  again  he  is  not  a  thinker,  except  at  the  rarest  moments, 
not  touched  at  all  by  the  scientific  ideas  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  For  that  reason  a  great  many  people,  accustomed 
to  look  for  philosophy  in  poetry,  do  not  care  about  his  verse. 
I  must  confess  that  I  myself  should  not  have  read  him,  had 
it  not  been  for  a  beautiful  criticism  of  his  work  published 
some  five  years  ago.  That  tempted  me  to  study  him, 
with  pleasant  results.  But  I  then  found  a  third  reason  for 
his  unpopularity — want  of  passion.  When  everything  else 
is  missing  that  attracts  intellectual  attention  to  a  poet,  every- 
thing strange,  novel,  and  philosophical,  he  may  still  become 
popular  if  he  has  strong  emotion,  deep  feeling.  But  Rob- 
ert Bridges  has  neither.  He  is  somewhat  cool,  even  when 
he  is  not  cold;  his  colours  are  never  strong,  though  they  are 
always  natural ;  and  there  is  something  faint  about  his  music 
that  makes  you  think  of  the  music  of  insects,  of  night 
crickets  or  locusts.  You  may  therefore  begin  to  wonder 
that  I  should  speak  about  him  at  all.  If  a  poet  has  no 
philosophy,  no  originality,  and  no  passion,  what  can  there 
be  in  him?     Well,  a  great  deal.     It  is  not  necessary  to  be 

385 


386  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

original  in  order  to  be  a  poet;  it  is  only  necessary  to  say 
old  things  somewhat  better  than  they  have  been  said  be- 
fore. Such  a  non-original  poet  of  excellence  may  be  a 
great  lover  of  nature;  for  nature  has  been  described  in  a 
million  ways,  and  we  are  not  tired  of  the  descriptions. 
Again,  the  feeling  need  not  be  very  strong;  it  is  not  strong 
in  Wordsworth,  except  at  moments.  I  think  that  the  charm 
of  Robert  Bridges,  who  is  especially  a  nature-poet,  lies 
in  his  love  of  quiet  effects,  pale  colours,  small  soft  sounds, 
all  the  dreaminess  and  all  the  gentleness  of  still  and  beauti- 
ful days.  Some  of  us  like  strong  sounds,  blazing  colours, 
heavy  scents  of  flowers  and  fruits ;  but  some  of  us  do  not — 
we  prefer  rest  and  coolness  and  quiet  tones.  And  I  think 
that  to  Japanese  feeling  Robert  Bridges  ought  to  make  an 
appeal.  Much  of  his  work  makes  me  think  of  the  old 
Japanese  colour  prints  of  spring,  summer,  autumn,  and  win- 
ter landscapes.  He  is  particularly  fond  of  painting  these; 
perhaps  half  of  his  poetry,  certainly  a  third  of  it,  deals  with 
descriptions  of  the  seasons.  There  is  nothing  tropical  in 
these  descriptions,  because  they  are  true  to  English  land- 
scape, the  only  landscape  that  he  knows  well.  Now  there 
is  a  good  deal  in  English  landscape,  in  the  colours  of  the 
English  seasons,  that  resembles  what  is  familiar  to  us  in  the 
aspects  of  Japanese  nature. 

I  cannot  tell  you  very  much  about  the  poet  himself;  he 
has  left  his  personality  out  of  the  reach  of  public  curiosity. 
I  can  only  tell  you  that  he  was  born  in  1844  and  that  he 
is  a  country  doctor,  which  is  very  interesting,  for  it  is  not 
often  that  a  man  can  follow  the  busy  duties  of  a  country 
physician  and  find  time  to  make  poetry.  But  Dr.  Bridges 
has  been  able  to  make  two  volumes  of  poetry  which  take 
very  high  rank;  and  a  whole  school  of  minor  poets  has 
been  classed  under  the  head  of  "Robert  Bridges  and  his 
followers"  in  the  new  Encyclopedia  of  English  poets. 

I  do  not  intend  at  once  to  tire  you  by  quoting  this  poet's 
descriptions  of  the  seasons;  I  only  want  to  interest  you  in 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  387 

him,  and  if  I  can  do  that,  you  will  be  apt  to  read  these  de- 
scriptions for  yourselves.  I  am  going  to  pick  out  bits,  here 
and  there,  which  seem  to  me  beautiful  in  themselves,  inde- 
pendently of  their  subjects.  Indeed,  I  think  this  is  the  way 
tl"iat  Robert  Bridges  wants  us  to  read  him.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  Book  IV,  of  the  shorter  poems  (you  will  be  inter- 
ested to  know  that  most  of  his  poems  have  no  titles),  he 
himself  tells  us  what  his  whole  purpose  is,  in  these  pretty 
stanzas : 

I  love  all  beauteous  things, 

I  seek  and  adore  them ; 
God  hath  no  better  praise, 
And  man  in  his  hasty  days 

Is  honoured  for  them. 

I  too  will  something  make, 

And  joy  In  the  making ; 
Ahhough  to-morrow  it  seem 
Like  the  empty  words  of  a  dream 

Remembered  on  waking. 

With  this  hint  I  have  no  hesitation  in  beginning  this  lec- 
ture on  Robert  Bridges  by  picking  out  what  seems  to  me 
almost  the  only  philosophical  poem  in  the  whole  of  his 
work.  The  philosophy  is  not  very  deep,  but  the  poem  is 
haunting. 

EROS 

Why  hast  thou  nothing  in  thy  face? 
Thou  idol  of  the  human  race, 
Thou  tyrant  of  the  human  heart. 
The  flower  of  lovely  youth  that  art; 
Yea,  and  that  standest  in  thy  youth 
An  image  of  eternal  Truth, 
With  thy  exuberant  flesh  so  fair. 
That  only  Pheidias  might  compare, 
Ere  from  his  chaste  marmoreal  form 
Time  had  decayed  the  colours  warm ; 
Like  to  his  gods  in  thy  proud  dress, 
Thy  starry  sheen  of  nakedness. 


388  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

Surely  thy  body  is  thy  mind, 
For  in  thy  face  is  nought  to  find, 
Only  thy  soft  unchristen'd  smile 
That  shadows  neither  love  nor  guile, 
But  shameless  will  and  power  immense, 
In  secret  sensuous  innocence. 

0  king  of  joy,  what  is  thy  thought? 

1  dream  thou  knowest  it  is  nought, 
And  wouldst  in  darkness  come,  but  thou 
Makest  the  light  where'er  thou  go. 

Ah  yet  no  victim  of  thy  grace, 

None  who  e'er  longed  for  thy  embrace, 

Hath  cared  to  look  upon  thy  face. 

The  divinity  here  described  is  not  the  infant  but  the 
more  mature  form  of  the  god  of  Love,  Eros  (from  whose 
name  is  derived  the  adjective  "erotic,"  used  in  such  terms  as 
"erotic  poetry").  This  Eros  was  represented  as  a  beautiful 
naked  boy  about  twelve  or  thirteen  years  old.  Several 
statues  of  him  are  among  the  most  beautiful  works  of  Greek 
art.  It  is  one  of  these  statues  that  the  poet  refers  to.  And 
you  must  understand  his  poem,  first  of  all,  as  treating  of 
physical  love,  physical  passion,  as  distinguished  from  love 
which  belongs  rather  to  the  mind  and  heart  and  which  is 
alone  real  and  enduring.  There  is  always  a  certain  amount 
of  delusion  in  physical  attraction,  in  mere  bodily  beauty; 
but  about  the  deeper  love,  which  is  perfect  friendship  be- 
tween the  sexes,  there  is  no  delusion,  and  it  only  grows 
with  time.  Now  the  god  Eros  represented  only  the  power 
of  physical  passion,  the  charm  of  youth.  Looking  at  the 
face  of  the  beautiful  statue,  the  poet  is  startled  by  some- 
thing which  has  been  from  ancient  times  noticed  by  all 
critics  of  Greek  art,  but  which  appears  to  him  strange  in 
another  way — there  is  no  expression  in  that  face.  It  is 
beautiful,  but  it  is  also  impersonal.  So  the  faces  of  all 
the  Greek  gods  were  impersonal;  they  represented  ideals, 
not  realities.     They  were  moved  neither  by  deep  love  nor 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  389 

by  deep  hate — not  at  least  in  the  conception  of  the  artist 
and  sculptor.  They  were  above  humanity,  above  affection, 
therefore  above  pity.  Here  it  is  worth  while  to  remark 
the  contrast  between  the  highest  Eastern  ideals  in  sculpture 
and  the  highest  Western  ideals.  In  the  art  of  the  Far 
East  the  Buddha  is  also  impersonal;  he  smiles,  but  the 
smile  is  of  infinite  pity,  compassion,  tenderness.  He  repre- 
sents a  supreme  ideal  of  virtue.  Nevertheless  he  is,  though 
impersonal,  warmly  human  for  this  very  reason.  The  more 
beautiful  Greek  divinity  smiles  deliciously,  but  there  is  no 
tenderness,  no  compassion,  no  affection  in  that  smile.  It 
is  not  human;  it  is  superhuman.  Looking  at  the  features 
of  a  Greek  Aphrodite,  an  Eros,  a  Dionysius,  you  feel  that 
they  could  smile  with  the  same  beautiful  smile  at  the  de- 
struction of  the  world.  What  does  the  smile  mean*?  You 
are  charmed  by  it,  yet  it  is  mysterious,  almost  awful.  It 
represents  nothing  but  supreme  content,  supreme  happiness 
— not  happiness  in  the  spiritual  sense  of  rest,  but  happiness 
of  perfect  youth  and  innocence  of  pain.  That  is  why 
there  is  something  terrible  about  it  to  the  modern  thinker. 
It  is  without  sympathy;  it  is  only  joy. 

Now  you  will  see  the  poem  in  its  inner  meaning.  Let 
us  paraphrase  it: 

"Why  is  there  no  expression  in  that  divinely  beautiful 
face  of  thine,  O  fair  god,  who  art  forever  worshipped  by 
the  race  of  men,  forever  ruling  the  hearts  of  its  youth  with- 
out pity,  without  compassion  I  Thou  who  art  the  perfect 
image  of  the  loveliness  of  youth,  and  the  symbol  of  some 
eternal  and  universal  law,  so  fair,  so  lovely  that  only  the 
great  Greek  sculptor  Pheidias  could  represent  thee  in  pure 
marble,  thou  white  as  that  marble  itself,  before  time  had 
faded  the  fresh  colour  with  which  thy  statue  had  been 
painted!  Truly  thou  art  as  one  of  his  gods  in  the  pride 
of  thy  nakedness — which  becomes  thee  more  than  any  robe, 
being  itself  luminous,  a  light  of  stars.  But  why  is  there 
no  expression  in  thy  face*? 


g90  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

"It  must  be  that  thy  body  represents  thy  mind.  Yet 
thy  mind  is  not  reflected  in  thy  face  like  the  mind  of  man. 
There  I  see  only  the  beautiful  old  pagan  smile,  the  smile 
of  the  years  before  the  Religion  of  Sorrow  came  into  this 
world.  And  that  smile  of  thine  shows  neither  love  nor 
hate  nor  shame,  but  power  incalculable  and  the  innocence 
of  sensuous  pleasure. 

"Thou  king  of  Joy,  of  what  dost  thou  think'?  For  thy 
face  no-wise  betrays  thy  thought.  Truly  I  believe  thou 
dost  not  think  of  anything  which  troubles  the  minds  of 
sorrowing  men;  thou  thinkest  of  nothing.  Thou  art  Joy, 
not  thought.  And  I  imagine  that  thou  wouldst  prefer  not 
to  be  seen  by  men,  to  come  to  them  in  darkness  only,  or  in- 
visibly, as  thou  didst  to  Psyche  in  other  years.  But  thou 
canst  not  remain  invisible,  since  thy  body  is  made  of  light, 
and  forever  makes  a  great  shining  about  thee.  For  un- 
counted time  thou  hast  moved  the  hearts  of  millions  of 
men  and  of  women;  all  have  known  thy  presence,  felt  thy 
power.  But  none,  even  of  those  who  most  longed  for 
thee,  has  ever  desired  to  look  into  thy  beautiful  face,  be- 
cause it  is  not  the  face  of  humanity  but  of  divinity,  and 
because  there  is  in  it  nothing  of  human  love." 

There  is  a  good  deal  to  think  about  in  this  poem,  but  to 
feel  the  beauty  of  it  you  ought  to  have  before  your  eyes, 
when  studying  it,  a  good  engraving  of  the  statue.  How- 
ever, even  without  any  illustration  you  will  easily  perceive 
the  moral  of  the  thought  in  it,  that  beauty  and  youth  alone 
do  not  signify  affection,  nor  even  anything  dear  to  the 
inner  nature  of  man. 

Now  I  shall  turn  to  another  part  of  the  poet's  work. 
Here  is  a  little  verse  about  a  grown  man  looking  at  the 
picture  of  himself  when  he  was  a  little  child.  I  think 
that  it  is  a  very  charming  sonnet,  and  it  will  give  you  some- 
thing to  think  about. 

A  man  that  sees  by  chance  his  picture,  made 
As  once  a  child  he  was,  handling  some  toy, 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  391 

Will  gaze  to  find  his  spirit  within  the  boy, 
Yet  hath  no  secret  with  the  soul  portrayed : 
He  cannot  think  the  simple  thought  which  played 
Upon  those  features  then  so  frank  and  coy ; 
'Tis  his,  yet  oh !  not  his :  and  o'er  the  joy 
His  fatherly  pity  bends  in  tears  dismayed. 

There  is  indeed  no  topic  which  Robert  Bridges  has  treated 
more  exquisitely  and  touchingly  than  certain  phases  of  child- 
hood, the  poetry  of  childhood,  the  purity  of  childhood,  the 
pathos  of  childhood.  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  except 
Patmore,  and  Patmore  only  in  one  poem,  "The  Toys,"  has 
even  approached  him.  Take  this  little  poem  for  example, 
on  the  death  of  a  little  boy.  It  is  the  father  who  is  speak- 
ing. 

ON  A  DEAD  CHILD 

Perfect  little  body,  without  fault  or  stain  on  thee, 

With  promise  of  strength  and  manhood  full  and  fair  I 
Though  cold  and  stark  and  bare. 
The  bloom  and  the  charm  of  life  doth  awhile  remain  on  thee. 

Thy  mother's  treasure  wert  thou ; — alas  I  no  longer 
To  visit  her  heart  with  wondrous  joy,  to  be 
Thy  father's  pride ; — ah,  he 
Must  gather  his  faith  together,  and  his  strength  make  stronger. 

To  me,  as  I  move  thee  now  in  the  last  duty, 

Dost  thou  with  a  turn  or  gesture  anon  respond ; 
Startling  my  fancy  fond 
With  a  chance  attitude  of  the  head,  a  freak  of  beauty. 

Thy  hand  clasps,  as  'twas  wont,  my  finger,  and  holds  it : 
But  the  grasp  is  the  clasp  of  Death,  heartbreaking  and  stiff ; 
Yet  feels  my  hand  as  if 
'Twas  still  thy  will,  thy  pleasure  and  trust  that  enfolds  it. 

So  I  lay  thee  there,  thy  sunken  eyelids  closing, — 

Go  lie  thou  there  in  thy  coffin,  thy  last  little  bed ; — 
Propping  thy  wise,  sad  head. 
Thy  firm,  pale  hands  across  thy  chest  disposing. 


892  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

So  quiet! — doth  the  change  content  thee? — Death,  whither  hath  he 
taken  thee  ? 
To  a  world,  do  I  think,  that  rights  the  disaster  of  this? 
The  vision  of  which  I  miss, 
Who  weep  for  the  body,  and  wish  but  to  warm  thee  and  awaken  thee  ? 

Ah !  little  at  best  can  all  our  hopes  avail  us 

To  lift  this  sorrow,  or  cheer  us,  when  in  the  dark 
Unwilling,  alone  we  embark, 
And  the  things  we  have  seen,  and  have  known  and  have  heard  of, 
fail  us ! 

You  will  see  the  exquisiteness  of  this  more  fully  after  a 
little  explanation.  The  father  is  performing  the  last  duty 
to  his  little  dead  son :  washing  the  body  with  his  own  hands, 
closing  the  eyes,  and  placing  the  little  corpse  in  the  coffin, 
rather  than  trust  this  work  to  any  less  loving  hands.  The 
Western  coffin,  you  must  know,  is  long,  and  the  body  is 
placed  in  it  lying  at  full  length  as  upon  a  bed,  with  a 
little  pillow  to  support  the  head.  Then  the  hands  are 
closed  upon  the  heart  in  the  attitude  of  prayer.  The  poem 
describes  more  than  the  feelings  of  a  father,  .during  these 
tender  offices.  As  he  turns  the  little  body  to  wash  it,  the 
small  head  changes  its  position  now  and  then,  and  the  mo- 
tion is  so  much  like  the  pretty  motions  made  by  that  little 
head  during  life,  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  believe  there  is 
now  no  life  there.  In  all  modern  English  poetry  there  is 
nothing  more  touching  than  the  lines : 

Startling  my  fancy  fond 
With  a  chance  attitude  of  the  head,  a  freak  of  beauty. 

The  word  "freak"  is  incomparably  beautiful  in  this  line, 
for  it  has  a  sense  of  playfulness;  it  means  often  a  childish 
fancy  or  whim  or  pretty  mischievous  action.  The  turning 
of  the  dead  head  seems  so  like  the  motion  of  the  living  head 
in  play.  Then  as  the  hands  were  washed  by  the  father,  the 
relaxed  muscles  caused  the  opened  fingers  to  close  upon  the 
father's  finger,  just  as  in  other  days  when  the  two  walked 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  393 

about  together,  the  little  boy's  hands  were  too  small  to 
hold  the  great  hands  of  the  father,  and  therefore  clasped  one 
finger  only.  Then  observe  the  very  effective  use  of  two 
most  simple  adjectives  to  picture  the  face  of  the  dead  child 
— "wise"  and  "sad."  Have  you  ever  seen  the  face  of  a 
dead  child?  If  you  have,  you  will  remember  how  its  calm- 
ness gives  one  the  suggestion  of  strange  knowledge ;  the  wise 
smile  little,  and  fond  fancy  for  thousands  of  years  has 
looked  into  the  faces  of  the  unsmiling  dead  in  search  of 
some  expression  of  supreme  knowledge.  Also  there  is  an 
expression  of  sadness  in  the  face  of  death,  even  in  the  faces 
of  children  asleep,  although  relaxation  of  muscles  is  the 
real  explanation  of  the  fact.  All  these  fancies  are  very 
powerfully  presented  in  the  first  five  verses. 

In  the  last  two  verses  the  sincerity  of  grief  uniquely  shows 
itself.  "Where  do  you  think  the  little  life  has  gone?"  the 
father  asks.  "Do  you  want  me  to  say  that  I  think  it  has 
gone  to  a  happier  world  than  this,  to  what  you  call  Heaven? 
Ah,  I  must  tell  you  the  truth.  I  do  not  know;  I  doubt,  I 
fear.  When  a  grief  like  this  comes  to  us,  all  our  religious 
imaginations  and  hopes  can  serve  us  little." 

You  must  read  that  over  and  over  again  to  know  the 
beauty  of  it.  Here  is  another  piece  of  very  touching  poetry 
about  a  boy,  perhaps  about  the  same  boy  who  afterward 
died.  It  will  require  some  explanation,  for  it  is  much 
deeper  in  a  way  than  the  previous  piece.  It  is  called  "Pater 
Filio,"  meaning  "the  father  to  the  son." 

Sense  with  keenest  edge  unused, 

Yet  unsteel'd  by  scathing  fire ; 
Lovely  feet  as  yet  unbruised 

On  the  ways  of  dark  desire ; 
Sweetest  hope  that  lookest  smiling 
O'er  the  wilderness  defiling! 

Why  such  beauty,  to  be  blighted 
By  the  swarm  of  foul  destruction? 


394  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

"Why  such  innocence  delighted, 

When  sin  stalks  to  thy  seduction? 
All  the  litanies  e'er  chaunted 
Shall  not  keep  thy  faith  undaunted. 

Me  too  once  unthinking  Nature 

— Whence  Love's  timeless  mockery  took  me, — 

Fashion'd  so  divine  a  creature, 
Yea,  and  like  a  beast  forsook  me. 

I  forgave,  but  tell  the  measure 

Of  her  crime  in  thee,  my  treasure. 

The  father  is  suffering  the  great  pain  of  fathers  when 
he  speaks  thus,  the  pain  of  fearing  for  the  future  of  his 
child;  and  the  mystery  of  things  oppresses  him,  as  it  op- 
presses everybody  who  knows  what  it  is  to  be  afraid  for 
the  sake  of  another.  He  wonders  at  the  beautiful  fresh 
senses  of  the  boy,  "yet  unsteeled  by  scathing  fire" — that  is, 
not  yet  hardened  by  experience  of  pain.  He  admires  the 
beauty  of  the  little  feet  tottering  happily  about;  but  in  the 
same  moment  dark  thoughts  come  to  him,  for  he  remem- 
bers how  blood-stained  those  little  feet  must  yet  become 
on  the  ways  of  the  world,  in  the  streets  of  cities,  in  the 
struggle  of  life.  And  he  delights  in  the  smile  of  the  child, 
full  of  hope  that  knows  nothing  of  the  great  foul  wilder- 
ness of  the  world,  in  which  envy  and  malice  and  passions 
of  many  kinds  make  it  difficult  to  remain  either  good  or 
hopeful.  And  he  asks,  "Why  should  a  child  be  made  so 
beautiful,  only  to  lose  that  beauty  at  a  later  day,  through 
sickness  and  grief  and  pain  of  a  thousand  kinds'?  Why 
should  a  child  come  into  the  world  so  charmingly  innocent 
and  joyful,  only  to  lose  that  innocence  and  happiness  later 
on  through  the  encountering  of  passion  and  temptation? 
Why  should  a  child  believe  so  deeply  in  the  gods  and  in 
human  nature?  Later  on,  no  matter  how  much  he  grieves, 
the  time  will  come  when  that  faith  in  the  powers  unseen 
must  be  sadly  warped." 

And  lastly  the  father  remembers  his  own  childhood,  think- 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  395 

ing,  "I  too  was  once  a  divine  little  creature  like  that.  Love, 
the  eternal  illusion,  brought  me  into  the  vi^orld,  and  Nature 
made  me  as  innocent  and  trustful  as  this  little  boy.  Later 
on,  however,  the  same  Nature  abandoned  me,  like  the  ani- 
mal that  forsakes  her  young  as  soon  as  they  grow  a  little 
strong.  I  forgave  Nature  for  that  abandonment,"  the 
father  says,  turning  to  the  child,  "but  it  is  only  when  I  look 
at  you,  my  treasure,  that  I  understand  how  much  I  lost  with 
the  vanishing  of  my  own  childhood." 

Nobody  in  the  whole  range  of  English  literature  has 
written  anything  more  tender  than  that.  It  is  out  of  the 
poet's  heart. 

One  would  expect,  on  reading  delicacies  of  this  kind, 
that  the  poet  would  express  himself  not  less  beautifully 
than  tenderly  in  regard  to  woman.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  certainly  ranks  next  to  Rossetti  as  a  love  poet,  even  in 
point  of  workmanship.  I  am  also  inclined  to  think,  and  I 
believe  that  critics  will  later  recognise  this,  that  his  feeling 
in  regard  to  the  deeper  and  nobler  qualities  of  love  can  only 
be  compared  to  the  work  of  Browning  in  the  same  direc- 
tion. It  has  not  Browning's  force,  nor  the  occasional 
sturdiness  that  approaches  roughness.  It  is  altogether  softer 
and  finer,  and  it  has  none  of  Browning's  eccentricities.  A 
collection  of  sonnets,  fifty-nine  in  number,  entitled  "The 
Growth  of  Love"  may  very  well  be  compared  with  Ros- 
setti's  sonnet-sequence,  "The  House  of  Life."  But  it  is 
altogether  unlike  Rossetti's  work;  it  deals  with  thought  more 
than  sensation,  and  with  joy  more  than  sorrow.  But  be- 
fore we  give  an  example  of  these,  let  me  quote  a  little 
fancy  of  a  very  simple  kind,  that  gives  the  character  of 
Robert  Bridges  as  a  love  poet  quite  as  well  as  any  long 
or  elaborate  poem  could  do. 

Long  are  the  hours  the  sun  is  above, 

But  when  evening  comes  I  go  home  to  my  love. 

I'm  away  the  daylight  hours  and  more, 
Yet  she  comes  not  down  to  open  the  door. 


896  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

She  does  not  meet  me  upon  the  stair, — 

She  sits  in  my  chamber  and  waits  for  me  there. 

As  I  enter  the  room  she  does  not  move ; 
I  always  walk  straight  up  to  my  love ; 

And  she  lets  me  take  my  wonted  place 

At  her  side,   and   gaze   in   her   dear,   dear   face. 

There  as  I  sit,  from  her  head  thrown  back 
Her  hair  falls  straight  in  a  shadow  black. 

Aching  and  hot  as  my  tired  eyes  be, 
She  is  all  that  I  wish  to  see. 

And  in  my  wearied  and  toil-dinned  ear, 
She  says  all  things  that  I  wish  to  hear. 

Dusky  and  duskier  grows  the  room, 
Yet  I  see  her  best  in  the  darker  gloom. 

When  the  winter  eves  are  early  and  cold, 
The  firelight  hours  are  a  dream  of  gold. 

And  so  I  sit  here  night  by  night. 

In  rest  and  enjoyment  of  love's  delight. 

But  a  knock  at  the  door,  a  step  on  the  stair 
Will  startle,  alas,  my  love  from  her  chair. 

If  a  stranger  comes  she  will  not  stay : 
At  the  first  alarm  she  is  off  and  away. 

And  he  wonders,  my  guest,  usurping  her  throne, 
That  I  sit  so  much  by  myself  alone. 

You  feel  the  mystery  of  the  thing  beginning  at  the  sec- 
ond stanza,  but  not  until  you  get  to  the  sixth  stanza  do  you 
begin  to  perceive  it.  This  is  not  a  living  woman,  but  a 
ghost.  The  whole  poetry  of  the  composition  is  here.  What 
does  the  poet  mean*?     He  has  not  told  us  anywhere,  and  it 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  397 

is  better  that  he  should  not  have  told  us,  because  we  can 
imagine  so  many  things,  so  many  different  circumstances, 
which  the  poem  would  equally  well  illustrate.  Were  this 
the  fancy  of  a  young  man,  we  might  say  that  the  phantom 
love  means  the  ideal  wife,  the  unknown  bride  of  the  fu- 
ture, the  beautiful  dream  that  every  young  man  makes  for 
himself  about  a  perfectly  happy  home.  Again,  we  might 
suppose  that  the  spirit  bride  is  not  really  related  at  all  to 
love  in  the  common  sense,  but  figures  or  symbolises  only 
the  devotion  of  the  poet  to  poetry,  in  which  case  the  spirit 
bride  is  art.  But  the  poet  is  not  a  young  man;  he  is  an 
old  country  doctor,  coming  home  late  every  night  from  vis- 
iting his  patients,  tired,  weary,  but  with  plenty  of  work  to 
do  in  his  private  study.  Who,  then,  may  be  the  shadowy 
woman  with  the  long  black  hair  always  waiting  for  him 
alone'?  Perhaps  art,  perhaps  a  memory,  most  likely  the 
memory  of  a  dead  wife,  and  we  may  even  imagine,  the 
mother  of  the  little  boy  about  whose  death  the  poet  has  so 
beautifully  written  elsewhere.  I  do  not  pretend  to  ex- 
plain; I  do  not  want  to  explain;  I  am  only  anxious  to  show 
you  that  this  composition  fulfils  one  of  the  finest  condi- 
tions of  poetry,  by  its  suggestiveness.  It  leaves  many  ques- 
tions to  be  answered  in  fancy,  and  all  of  them  are  beautiful. 
Let  me  now  take  a  little  piece  about  the  singing  of  the 
nightingale.  I  think  you  remember  that  I  read  to  you,  and 
commented  upon  Keats's  poem  about  the  nightingale.  That 
is  the  greatest  English  poem,  the  most  perfect,  the  most 
unapproachable  of  poems  upon  the  nightingale.  And  after 
that,  only  a  very,  very  skilful  poet  dare  write  seriously  about 
the  nightingale,  for  his  work,  if  at  all  imperfect,  must  suf- 
fer terribly  by  comparison  with  the  verses  of  Keats.  But 
Robert  Bridges  has  actually  come  very  near  to  the  height 
of  Keats  in  a  three  stanza  poem  upon  the  same  subject. 
The  treatment  of  the  theme  is  curiously  different.  The 
poem  of  Keats  represents  supreme  delight,  the  delight  which 
is  so  great  that  it  becomes  sad.     The  poem  of  Bridges  is 


398  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

slightly  dark.  The  mystery  of  the  bird  song  is  the  fact 
that  he  chiefly  considers;  and  he  considers  it  in  a  way  that 
leaves  you  thinking  a  long  time  after  the  reading  of  the 
verses.  The  suggestions  of  the  composition,  however,  can 
best  be  considered  after  we  have  read  the  verses. 

NIGHTINGALES 

Beautiful  must  be  the  mountains  whence  ye  come, 

And  bright  in  the  fruitful  valleys  the  streams,  wherefrom 

Ye  learn  your  song: 
Where  are  those  starry  woods?     O  might  I  wander  there, 
Among  the  flowers,  which  in  that  heavenly  air 

Bloom  the  year  long  I 

Nay,  barren  are  those  mountains  and  spent  the  streams : 
Our  song  is  the  voice  of  desire,  that  haunts  our  dreams, 

A  throe  of  the  heart. 
Whose  pining  visions  dim,  forbidden  hopes  profound, 
No  dying  cadence  nor  long  sigh  can  sound, 

For  all  our  art. 

Alone,  aloud  in  the  raptured  ear  of  men 

We  pour  our  dark  nocturnal  secret;  and  then. 

As  night  is  withdrawn 
From  these  sweet-springing  meads  and  bursting  boughs  of  May, 
Dream,  while  the  innumerable  choir  of  day 

Welcome  the  dawn. 

Other  poets,  following  the  popular  notion  that  birds  are 
happy  when  they  sing,  often  speak  of  the  nightingale  as  an 
especially  happy  bird  because  of  the  extraordinary  sweet- 
ness of  its  song.  The  Greek  poets  thought  otherwise;  to 
them  it  seemed  that  the  song  of  the  birds  was  the  cry  of 
infinite  sorrow  and  regret,  and  one  of  the  most  horrible  of 
all  the  Greek  myths  is  the  story  of  Philomela,  transformed 
into  a  nightingale.  Matthew  Arnold,  you  may  remember, 
takes  the  Greek  view.  So  in  a  way  does  Robert  Bridges, 
but  there  are  other  suggestions  in  his  verse,  purely  human. 
Pajaphrased,  the  meaning  is  this  (a  man  speaks  first)  : 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  399 

"When  I  listen  to  your  song,  I  feel  sure  that  the  coun- 
try from  which  you  come  must  be  very  beautiful ;  and  very 
sweet  the  warbling  music  of  the  stream,  whose  sound  may 
have  taught  you  how  to  sing.  O  how  much  I  wish  that 
I  could  go  to  your  wonderful  world,  your  tropical  world, 
where  summer  never  dies,  and  where  flowers  are  all  the  year 
in  bloom."  But  the  birds  answer:  "You  are  in  error. 
Desolate  is  the  country  from  which  we  come;  and  in  that 
country  the  mountains  are  naked  and  barren,  and  the  rivers 
are  dried  up.  If  we  sing,  it  is  because  of  the  pain  that  we 
feel  in  our  hearts,  the  pain  of  great  desire  for  happier  things. 
But  that  which  we  desire  without  knowing  it  by  sight,  that 
which  we  hope  for  in  vain,  these  are  more  beautiful  than 
any  song  of  ours  can  express.  Skilful  we  are,  but  not  skil- 
ful enough  to  utter  all  that  we  feel.  At  night  we  sing, 
trying  to  speak  our  secret  of  pain  to  men;  but  when  all  the 
other  birds  awake  and  salute  the  sun  with  happy  song, 
while  all  the  flowers  open  their  leaves  to  the  light,  then 
we  do  not  sing,  but  dream  on  in  silence  and  shadow." 

Is  there  not  in  this  beautiful  verse  the  suggestion  of  the 
condition  of  the  soul  in  the  artist  and  the  poet,  in  those 
whose  works  are  beautiful  or  seem  beautiful,  not  because 
of  joy,  but  because  of  pain — the  pain  of  larger  knowledge 
and  deeper  perception?  I  think  it  is  particularly  this  that 
makes  the  superior  beauty  of  the  stanzas.  You  soon  find 
yourself  thinking,  not  about  the  nightingale,  but  about  the 
human  heart  and  the  human  soul. 

Here  and  there  on  almost  every  page  of  Bridges  are 
to  be  found  queer  little  beauties,  little  things  that  reveal 
the  personality  of  the  writer.  Can  you  describe  an  April 
sky,  and  clouds  in  the  sky,  and  the  light  and  the  colour 
of  the  day,  all  in  two  lines?  It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to 
do;  but  there  are  two  lines  that  seem  to  do  it  in  a  poem, 
which  is  the  sixth  of  the  fourth  book: 

On  high  the  hot  sun  smiles,  and  banks  of  cloud  uptower 
In  bulging  heads  that  crowd  for  miles  the  dazzling  South. 


400  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

Notice  the  phrase  "bulging  heads."  Nothing  is  so  diffi- 
cult to  describe  in  words,  as  to  form,  than  ordinary  clouds, 
because  the  form  is  indefinite.  Yet  the  great  rounding 
masses  do  dimly  suggest  giant  heads,  not  necessarily  the 
heads  of  persons,  much  oftener  heads  of  trees.  The  word 
"bulging"  means  not  only  a  swelling  outwards  but  a  soft 
baggy  kind  of  swelling.  No  other  adjective  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  could  better  express  the  roundish  form  here 
alluded  to.  And  we  know  that  they  are  white,  simply  by 
the  poet's  use  of  the  word  dazzling  that  completes  the  pic- 
ture. But  there  is  more  to  notice ;  the  poet  has  called  these 
clouds  banks  of  cloud,  and  has  spoken  of  them  as  crowding 
the  sky  for  miles.  Remember  that  a  bank  of  clouds  always 
implies  masses  of  cloud  joined  together  below.  Now  on  a 
beautiful  clear  day  you  must  have  often  noticed  in  the  sky 
that  a  clear  space,  straight  as  any  line  upon  a  map,  marks 
off  the  lower  part  of  the  cloud.  Between  the  horizon  and 
this  line  there  is  only  clear  blue;  then  the  clouds,  all  lined 
and  joined  together  at  the  bottom,  are  all  rounded,  bulgy 
at  the  top.  This  is  what  the  two  lines  which  I  have  quoted 
picture  to  us. 

In  the  simplest  fancies,  however,  the  same  truth  to  Na- 
ture is  observable,  and  comes  to  us  in  like  surprises.  Here 
is  a  little  bit  about  a  new  moon  shining  on  the  sea  at 
night. 

She  lightens  on  the  comb 

Of  leaden  waves,  that  roar 
And  thrust  their  hurried  foam 

Up  on  the  dusky  shore. 

Behind  the  Western  bars 

The  shrouded  day  retreats, 
And  unperceived  the  stars 

Steal  to  their  sovran  seats. 

And  whiter  grows  the  foam, 
The  small  moon  lightens  more ; 


ROBERT  BRIDGES  401 

And  as  I  turn  me  home, 
My  shadow  walks  before. 

You  feel  that  this  has  been  seen  and  felt,  that  it  is  not 
merely  the  imagination  of  a  man  sitting  down  to  manu- 
facture poetry  at  his  desk.  I  imagine  that  you  have  not 
seen  the  word  "comb"  used  of  wave  motion  very  often, 
though  it  is  now  coming  more  and  more  into  poetical  use. 
The  comb  of  the  wave  is  its  crest,  and  the  term  is  used  just 
as  we  use  the  word  comb  in  speaking  of  the  crest  of  a 
cock.  But  there  is  also  the  verb  "to  comb" ;  and  this  re- 
fers especially  to  the  curling  over  of  the  crest  of  the  wave, 
just  before  it  breaks,  when  the  appearance  of  the  crest- 
edge  resembles  that  of  wool  being  pulled  through  a  comb 
{kushi).  Thus  the  word  gives  us  two  distinct  and  pic- 
turesque ideas,  whether  used  as  noun  or  as  adjective.  No- 
tice too  the  use  of  "leaden"  in  relation  to  the  colour  of 
waves  where  not  touched  by  moonlight;  the  dull  grey  could 
not  be  better  described  by  any  other  word.  Also  observe 
that  as  night  advances,  though  the  sea  becomes  dark,  the 
form  appears  to  become  whiter  and  whiter.  In  a  phos- 
phorescent sea  the  foam  lines  appear  very  beautiful  in 
darkness. 

I  shall  quote  but  one  more  poem  by  Robert  Bridges, 
choosing  it  merely  to  illustrate  how  modern  things  appear 
to  this  charming  dreamer  of  old-fashioned  dreams.  One 
would  think  that  he  could  not  care  much  about  such  mat- 
ters as  machinery,  telegraphs,  railroads,  steamships.  But 
he  has  written  a  very  fine  sonnet  about  a  steamship;  and 
the  curious  thing  is  that  this  poem  appears  in  the  middje  of 
a  collection  of  love  poems : 

The  fabled  sea-snake,  old  Leviathan, 

Or  else  what  grisly  beast  of  scaly  chine 

That  champ'd  the  ocean-wrack  and  swash'd  the  brine, 

Before  the  new  and  milder  days  of  man, 

Had  never  rib  nor  bray  nor  swindging  fan 


402  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

Like  his  iron  swimmer  of  the  Clyde  or  Tyne, 
Late-born  of  golden  seed  to  breed  a  line 
Of  offspring  swifter  and  more  huge  of  plan. 

Straight  is  her  going,  for  upon  the  sun 

When  once  she  hath  look'd,  her  path  and  place  are  plain; 

With  tireless  speed  she  smiteth  one  by  one 

The  shuddering  seas  and  foams  along  the  main  ; 

And  her  eased  breath,  when  her  wild  race  is  run, 

Roars  through  her  nostrils  like  a  hurricane. 

While  this  is  true  to  fact,  it  is  also  fine  fancy;  the  only 
true  way  in  which  the  practical  and  mechanical  can  appeal 
to  the  poet  is  in  the  sensation  of  life  and  power  that  it 
produces. 

I  think  we  have  read  together  enough  of  Robert  Bridges 
to  excite  some  interest  in  such  of  his  poetry  as  we  have 
not  read.  But  you  will  have  perceived  that  this  poet  is 
in  his  own  way  quite  different  from  other  poets  of  the  time, 
and  that  he  cannot  appeal  to  common-place  minds.  His 
poetry  is  like  fine  old  wine,  mild,  mellowed  wine,  that  only 
the  delicate  palate  will  be  able  to  appreciate  properly. 


INDEX 


"Abt  Vogler,"  195-199 

"After   Death,"    167-169 

"Against    the    haloed    lattice-panes," 

113 
"Agamemnon"   of   "^schylus,"   236 
"Alack,  it  was  I  who  leaped  at  the 

sun,"  209 
"All  delicate  days  and  pleasant,"  153 
"All    the    bright    lights    of    heaven," 

165 
"Along  the  garden  ways  just  now," 

16 
"Amelia,"  21 
"Ancien   Regime,"  216 
"And   I   cried    'O   unseen    Sender  of 

Corruption,' "  375 
"And      rearing      Lindis      backward 

pressed,"   342 
"And  we  say  that  repose  has  fled," 

320 
"Angel  in  the  House,  The,"  21 
"Arabian  Nights,"  137 
Arnold,    Matthew,    30,    32,    298-333, 

377.  398 
"As    when    two    men    have    loved    a 

woman  well,"  121 
"Atalanta  in  Calydon,"   127,  169 
"Atalanta's  Race,"   13-15 
Aurelius,  Marcus,  326,  328 
"Ay,  but  ii'e  that  the  wind  and  sea 

gird  round,"  170 


"Balaustian's    Adventure,"    236-237 
"Ballad  of  Dead  Ladies,"  123 
"Ballad  of  Judas  Iscariot,  The,"  361- 

368,  372,  375 
"Battle   of   Brunanburh,"   353 
Baudelaire,  Charles,  131,  136 
"Beautiful    must    be    the    mountains 

whence  ye  come,"  398 
"Because   man's    soul    is   man's    God 

still,"   134 
"Birth-Bond,  The,"  47,  120 
"Bishop  Blougram's  Apology,"  232 
"Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb,  The,"  232 
Blake,  William,  258,  372 
"Blessed  Damozel,  The,"  49,  53-65 

403 


"Blessed  damozel  leaned  out,  The," 

53 
"Blot  on  the  'Scutcheon,  The,"  235 
"Blue  Closet,  The,"  254,  256 
"Body's  Beauty,"  122 
"Book  of  Orm,  The,"  372 
"Born  of  the  day  that  died,  that  eve," 

"Brides  of  Enderby,  The,"  336 
"Bride's  Prelude,  The,"  111-117 
Bridges,  Robert,  385-402 
"Bright   star!    would    I   were   stead- 
fast as  thou  art,"  27 
Browning,  Robert,   i,  22,   30,   37,  98, 

172-238,  256,  298,  359,  395 
Buchanan,  Robert,  359-375 
".  .  .  But  Hallbiorn  into  the  bower  is 

gone,"  259 
"But  here  is  the  finger  of  God,"  198 
"But  men  say  that  howsoever  all  other 

folk  of  earth,"  275 
"But  the  very  first  step  he  made  from 

the   place,"    264 
Byron,   Lord   George  Gordon,   i,   30, 

31,  125,  129,  241,  297,  331 
"By    the    Earth    that    groweth    and 

giveth,"  274 
"By  the  North  Sea,"  138 

"Caliban  upon  Setebos,"  234 
"Canterbury  Tales,"  242 
"Card-Dealer,  The,"  99-100 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  125,  174 
"Carmen,"  98-99 
"Cavalier  Tunes,"  211-215 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,   187 
"Cenci,"  127 

Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  241,  242,  243 
"Christabel,"  108,  264 
Cicero,  Marcus  Tullius,  15 
Clifford,  William  Kingdon,  300 
"Cloud  Confines,  The,"  41 
Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  300,  377,  380 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  2,  30,  31, 

105,  108,  264,  297,  303 
Comte,  Auguste,   133,   136 
"Confessional,  The,"  216 
"Consider  the  sea's  listless  chime,"  46 


404? 


INDEX 


"  Consolation,"  309-310 
"Count  Gismond,"  215,  250 
Crabbe,  George,  360 
"Creep  into  thy  narrow  bed,"  317 
"Cristina  and  Monaldeschi,"  216 
"Crouched  on  the  pavement,"  325 

Dante,  Alighieri,  11,  37,  54,  123,  233, 

312 
"Dante  and  His  Circle,"  123 
Darwin,  Charles  Robert,  300,  302 
"Day  is  dark   and  the   night.   The," 

41-43 
"Defence   of    Guinevere,   The,'     244, 

257 
"Delight  he  takes  but  in  living.  The," 

138 
De  Musset,  Alfred,  35-36,  54 
"Devil's  Mystics,  The,"  372 
"Dialogues  Philosophiques,"  372 
"Divinity,  The,"  329 
"Don  Juan,"  129 
"Dorothy,"  376-384 
"Dost   thou    dream,   in    a    respite   of 

slumber,"  163 
"Dover  Beach,"  312-313 
"Dramatic  Idyls,"  234,  237 
"Dramatis  Personae,"  234 
"Dream  of  Man,  The,"  353,  374 
"Dream  of  the  World  without  Death, 

The,"  374 

"Earthly  Paradise,"  242 

"Eden  Bower,"  49,  52,  97 

"Eighteen  years  till  then  he  had  seen," 

94 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  172 
"England,   my  mother.   Wardress  of 

waters,"  353 
•"Enoch  Arden,"  32 
"Eros,"  387 
"Evangeline,"  294 
"Even   in   a  palace   life  may  be   led 

well,"  327 
"Eve  of  Crecy,  The,"  254,  255-256 
"Evil  sped  the  battle  play  on  the  Pope 

Calixtus'  day,"   287 

"Fabled  sea-snake,  old  Leviathan, 
The,"  401 

"Fair  was  Knut  of  face  and  limb," 
262 

".  .  .  Far  off,  in  the  heart  of  the  dark- 
ness," 295 

Fitzgerald,  Edward,   359 

Flaubert,  Gustav,  131 

"Folk-Mote  by  the  River,  The,"  263 


"For  sometimes,  were  the  truth  con- 

fess'd,"    loi 
"Four  boards  of  the  coffin  lid.  The," 

167 
"Frederick  and  Alice,"  369-371 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  244 
"Future,  The,"  319-322 

Gautier,  Theophile,  136 

"Gazing  on  stars,  my  Star,"  28 

"Give  a  Rouse,"  212 

Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang  von,  298, 

299,  369 
"Goldilocks  and  Goldilocks,"  263 
"Grammarian  Funeral,  A,"  203-207 
"Greater  Memory,"  17,  i8 
"Growing  Old,"  316-317 
"Growth  of  Love,  The,"  395 

"Had  she  come  all  the  way  for  this," 

245 
"Hafbur  and  Signy,"  263 
Hamilton,  Lee,  45,  47 
Hampole,  Richard  Rolle  of,  169 
Harrison,  Frederic,  133 
"Have  you  not  noted,  in  some  family," 

47 
"Haystack  in  the  Floods,  The,"  245- 

249,  257 
"Heard   ye   not   the   bodmg   sound, 

370 
"Heavenborn  Helen,  Sparta's  Queen," 

49-52 
Hemans,  Felicia  Dorothea,  31 
"Heretic's  Tragedy,  The,"  215 
"Hereward,"   353 
"Heroes,  The,"  294 
"Hesperia,"  157 
"He    wiled    me    through    the    furzy 

croft,"  290 
"High  Tide  on  the  Coast  of  Lincoln- 
shire, The,"  334-348 
"His    bloodied    banner    crossed    his 

mouth,"  75 
"Hold  by  the  right,  you  double  your 

mig/it,"  214 
"Hollow   sea-shell,   which  for  years. 

The,"  45 
Homer,  34,  164,  243,  267 
"Honeysuckle,  The,"  39 
"House  of  Life,  The,"  47,  n8,  395 
Hugo,  Victor,  13,  25,  26,  27,  124,  298 
"Human  Life,"  306 
Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  136,  302,  304, 

349 
"Hymn  of  Prosperme,"  150-156 
"Hypatia,"  353 


INDEX 


405 


"I  am  the  queen  of  Ethiope,"  142 

"Idylls  of  the  King,"  32 

"I  have  been  here  before,"  15 

"I  looked  without,  and  lo !  my  sonne," 

340 
"I  love  all  beauteous  things,"  387 
"Imitation  of  Christ,  The,"  324 
"In  a  Balcony,"  235 
"In  a  Gondola,"  199-202 
Ingelow,  Jean,  334-348 
"In  Harmony  with  Nature,"  303-306 
"In  Memoriam,"  32,  113 
"In  Prison,"  254,  256 
"Inside  my  father's  close,"  125 
"In   the   heart  there   lay   buried   for 

years,"  17 
"In  the  time  of  the  civil  broils,"  124 
"I  plucked  a  honeysuckle,"  39 
"I    said,    'she    must    be    swift    and 

white,'  "  148 
"I   sat   with   Love   upon   a   woodside 

well,"  I20 
"I  shall  never  hear  her  more,"  347 
"It  is  a  golden  morning  of  the  spring," 

"It  lies  in  Heaven,  across  the  flood," 

56 
"It  was  roses,  roses  all  the  way,"  208 
"Itylus,"  169 
"Ivan   Ivanovitch,"   192-195 


"Jenny,"  99,  100-104 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  302 
"Judgment  of  God,  The,"  250-254 
"Just  as  another  woman  sleeps,"  102 

Keats,  John,  27,  28,  30,  31,  282,  283, 

303,. 349,  397 
Kempis,  Thomas  a,   324 
"Kentish     Sir    Byng    stood    for    his 

King,"  213 
"King   Charles,   and   who'll    do   him 

right  now,"  212 
"King  of  Denmark's  Sons,  The,"  262- 

263 
Kingsley,  Charles,  278,  280-297,  353 
Kingsley,  Henry,  41 
"King's  Quhair,  The,"  97 
"King's  Tragedy,  The,"  97 
"Knight  Aagen  and  the  Maiden  Else," 

263 

"La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,"  282 
^'Lady,"    he    said,    "your    lands    lie 
burnt,"  69 


"Lady    unbound    her    jewelled    zone, 

The,"  109 
"Last  Confession,  A,"  98 
"Last  Word,  The,"  317 
"Laus  Veneris,"  160-162 
"Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  The,"  108 
"Les  Burgraves,"  124 
"Let    us    begin    and    carry    up    this 

corpse,"  203 
"Life  and  Death  of  Jason,  The,"  278 
"Light,  perfect  and  visible.  Godhead 

of  God,"  140 
"Light  Woman,  A,"  175-180 
"Like  bright  waves  that  fall,"  311 
"Little  Tower,  The,"  254 
"Locksley  Hall,"  20 
"Lo,  Father,  is  thine  ear  inclined,"  72 
"Long  are  the  hours  the  sun  is  above," 

395 
Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  294 
"Lost  on  Both  Sides,"  121 
"Lo,  this  is  she  that  was  the  world's 

delight,"  161 
"Love  is  Enough,"  244 
"Love  took  up  the  harp  of  Life,"   8 
"Lucretius,"  34 
"Luria,"  235 

Macaulay,   Lord  Thomas  Babington, 

300 
"Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,"  136 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  256 
"Make   me    a   face,    on    the   window 

there,"  188 
"Mango  Tree,  The,"  289-291 
"Man  that  sees  by  chance  his  picture, 

A,"  390 
"Marching  Along,"  213 
"Masque  of  Queen  Bersabe,"  141-144 
"Maud,"  32 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  254 
"Men  and  Women,"  234 
"Men  say  it  was  a  stolen  tyde,"  336 
Meredith,  George,  31,  133,  298,  299, 

355,  356,  359,  385 
Merimee,  Prosper,  98 
"Merope,"  332 

Milton,  John,   126,   128,  332,  333 
"Mirror,  The,"  38 
Morris,  William,  30,  147,  239-279 
"Mother  bears  a  child,  perfection  is 

complete,  A,"  193 
"Moth's  kiss  first!  The,"  201 
"Mr.  Sludge,  'the  Medium,'  "  232 
Munby,  Joseph,  376-383 
"My  Father's  Close,"  125 
"My  Last   Duchess,"    181-186 


406 


INDEX 


"Never  the  time  and  the  place,"  22 

Newstead  Abbey,  331 
'Nightingales,"  398 
'No  light  to  lighten  and  no  rod,"  135 
'Not  a  drop  of   her  blood  was  hu- 
man," 97 

'Ode  to  the  Northeast  Wind,"  285 
'Of   Adam's  first  wife,   Lilith,   it   is 

told,"  122 
'O     fair     green-girdled     mother     of 

mine,"  139 
'Off  Shore,"  140 

'O  great  in  thine  own  conceit,"  354 
'Oh,  what  is  the  light  that  shines  so 

red,"  73 
'Old  mayor  climbed  the  belfry-tower, 

The,"  335 
'O  let  the  solid  ground,"  12 
'O    Mary,    go    and    call    the    cattle 

home,"  281 
'On  a  Dead  Child,"  391 
'On     sands     by     the     storm     never 

shaken,"  163 
"On  the  Downs,"  135 
'Orraulum,  The,"  372 
O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  i6,  44 
'Out  of  the  golden  remote  wild  west," 

157 

'Paracelsus,"  233 

'Parleyings  with   Certain   People   of 

Importance  in  Their  Day,"  234 
'Past  we  glide,  and  past,  and  past," 

200 
'Pater  Filio,"  393 

Patmore,  Coventry,  21,  n8,  332,  391 
'Patriot,  The,"  207-211 
'Pause,  A,"  19 
'Perfect   little   body,   without   fault," 

391 
Plato,  7 
'Poems,"  32 

'Poems  and  Ballads,"  132,  156 
'Poems  by  the  Way,"  244,  257-261 
'Poems  by  Two  Brothers,"  31 
'Poetry  of  a  Root-Crop,  The,"  292 
Pope,  Alexander,  32,  33 
'Portrait,  The,"  65-66 
'Prick  of  Conscience,"  169 
'Prince  of  sweet  songs  made  out  of 

tears,"  137 
'Princess,  The,"  32 
'Prometheus  Unbound,"  127 

"Queen  sat  idle  by  her  loom,  The," 
68 


Rachel  (Elisabeth  Rachel-Felix),  323, 

324 
"Rapunzel,"  263 
"Raven    and    the    King's    Daughter, 

The,"  263 
"Ravenshoe,"  41 
Renan,  Ernest,  372 
"Return  of  the  Druses,  The,"  235 
Richardson,  Samuel,  3 
Richepin,  Jean,  131 
"Ring  and  the  Book,  The,"  219-232 
"Rose  Mary,"  105-111 
Rossetti,  Christina  Georgina,  19 
Rossetti,  Daniel  Gabriel,  i,  15,  16,  30, 

37-125,  128,  233,  238,  241,  244,  297, 

298,  349,  351,  359,  395 
Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  134 
Ruskin,  John,  147,  148,  281 


"Sands  of  Dee,  The,"  280-281 

Saint  Bernard,  329-330 

Saintsbury,  Professor  George,  287 

"Saint's  Tragedy,  The,"  293 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  30,  31,  io8,  241,  369 

"Sea  is  calm  to-night,  The,"  312 

"Sea-Limits,  The,"  46 

"Sense   with    keenest    edge    unused,' 

393 
Shakespeare,  William,  173,  182,  219 

229,  256,  298,  304,  305 
"She  is  coming,  my  own,  my  sweet,' 

II 
"She  knew  it  not, — most  perfect  pain,' 

38 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  i,  31,  126,  127 

128,  297,  303 
"She  lightens  on  the  comb  of  leaden 

waves,"  400 
"She  sent  him  a  sharp  sword,"  70 
"Sir  Peter  Harpdon's  End,"  254,  255 
"Sister  Helen,"  80,  83-93,  97 
"So  far  as  our  story  approaches  the 

end,"  175 
"Sohrab  and  Rustum,"  332 
"Song  of  Roland,"  56 
"Songs  before  Sunrise,"  134 
"So  pure, — so   fall'n !     How  dare  to 

think,"    103 
"Sordello,"  174,  233 
"So,    the    three    Court-ladies    began 

their  trial,"  217 
"So  to  each  star  in  the  heavens,"  356 
"Soul's  Tragedy,  A,"  235-236 
Southey,  Robert,  303 
"So!     While  these  wait  the  trump  of 

doom,"  189 


INDEX 


407 


Spencer,  Herbert,  7,  133,  i86,  266,  267, 

274,  300,  302,  319 
"Sprung  from   the   blood   of   Israel's 

scattered    race,"    323 
"StaflE  and  Scrip,"  49,  67-78 
"Statue  and  the  Bust,  The,"  187-190 
"Story  of   Sigurd,"   265-273,   275-278 
"Strafford,"  235 
"Strange   the  world   about   rae   lies," 

358 

"Stratton  Water,"  79 

"Sudden  Light,"  15,  44 

"Swallow  my  sister,  O  sister,  swal- 
low," 169 

"  'Swerve  to  the  left,  so  Roger,'  he 
said,"  251 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  79, 
123,  125,  126-170,  233,  238,  298,  328, 

349,  359 
Symonds,  John  Addington,  28 


".  .  .  To   the   dim   street,   I   led   her 

sacred  feet,"  21 
"Toys,  The,"  332,  391 
"Trembling  arm  I  pressed.  The,"  25 
"Triumph  of  Time,  The,"  139,  169 
"Troy  Town,"  49,  52 
"  'Twas  the  body  of  Judas  Iscariot," 

362 
"Two  young,  fair  lovers,  where  the 

warm  June-wind,"  309 

"Ulysses,"  34 

"Unknown  Eros,  The,"  21 

"Victorian  Anthology,"  368 
Villon,  Frangois,  123,  124,  137 
Virgil,  243 

"Vision  of  the  Man  Accurst,"  375 
"Voice,  The,"  311 


Taine,  Hippolyte,  35-36,  216,  379 
"Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  243 
"Tell  me  now  in  what  hidden  way," 

123 
Tennyson,  Charles,  31 
Tennyson,  Frederick,  23,  31 
Tennyson,  Lord  Alfred,  i,  8,  11,   13, 

20,  23,  28,  30-36,  109,  128,  233,  238, 

257,  297,  324,  349,  353 
"Thalassius,"  157-158 
"That's  my  last  Duchess  painted  on 

the  wall,"  i8i 
"That  well-nigh  wept  for  wonder," 

158 
"Then  stepped  a  damsel  to  her  side," 

76 
"Then,  with  weak  hasty  fingers,"  332 
"They  made  the  chamber  sweet  with 

flowers,"  19 
"They   out-talk'd    thee,    hiss'd   thee," 

"This  is  her  picture  as  she  was,"  65 
"Thomas  the  Rhymer,"  365,  369 
Thompson,  Maurice,  14 
"Thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  The," 

326 
"Three  Fishers,  The,"  280 
"Three  Silences,"  349-351 
"Through  the  long  winter  the  rough 

wind  tears,"  124 
"Thyrsis,"  332 
"Time  crept.     Upon  a  day  at  length," 

116 
" 'Tis  a  world  of  silences,"  350 
"Tithonus,"  34 


Wagner,  Richard,  269,  274 
Watson,  William,  352-358 
"Weakly  her  mistress  was,"  381 
"Weird  Lady,  The,"  283 
"Welcome  wild  North-easter!    Shame 

it  is  to  see,"  285-286 
"Well,  here's  the  platform,  here's  the 

proper  place,"  207 
"West  London,"  325 
"What  is  it  to  grow  old,"  316 
"What  made  my  heart,  at  Newstead," 

331 
"What    mortal    when    he    saw    life's 

voyage  done,"  306 
"When  Spring  grows  old,  and  sleepy 

winds,"  14 
"When  the  wind  is  in  the  East,"  285 
"Which,"  216-219 
"White  Ship,  The,"  80,  94-96 
Whitman,  Walt,  136 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  287,  289 
"Who  rules  these  lands?  the  Pilgrim 

said,"  67 
"Why  did  you  melt  your  waxen  man," 

"Why  hast  thou  nothing  in  thy  face," 

387 
"Willowwood,"  120 
"Wilt  thou   yet  take   all,   Galilean," 

151 
"Wind  flapped  loose,  The,"  40 
"Wind,  The,"  254,  255 
"Woodspurge,  The,"  40 
Wordsworth,  William,  i,  30,  31,  32, 

291,  302,  352,  386 


408  INDEX 

"Worldly  Place,"  327  "You  are  sick,  thaf  s  sure,"  they  say, 

"World-Strangeness,"  358  237 

"Would  that  the  structure  brave,"  196      Yriarte,  Charles  Emile,  187 

"Yes,  write  it  in  the  rock,"  329  Zola,  Emile,  131 


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